


The Most Elementary of Errors

by AboveChamonix



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:40:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AboveChamonix/pseuds/AboveChamonix
Summary: This is very much just another Vastra and Jenny falling in love story that leads to smut (very explicit smut, I should probably add). This story has been told by other people before, and there are many stories posted here that are much better than this one. In the notes, I list my favourites, which have influenced this one, and which I encourage you to read because they are awesome.There are two reasons for why I’ve written this. Firstly, I’ve recently become belatedly obsessed with Vastra and Jenny and I’ve read so many Vastra and Jenny stories that I’ve pretty much ran out of them, so I wrote my own as a last resort mostly to quell my thirst for more. Secondly, even though lots of the stories I’ve read are absolutely brilliant and I love them, there is one particular anatomical fact that no one seems to have picked up on, and it started to bother me, so I wrote something that incorporates that fact.Did you know lots of reptiles have two clits? They do. Look it up if you don’t believe me.There are some canon inconsistencies. I’ve mostly ignored the the Brilliant Book 2012. I obviously neither created nor own the characters.
Relationships: Jenny Flint/Madame Vastra
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter One

Jenny woke up feeling strange. Indeed, the first fully formed thought that reached her consciousness, well before she was awake enough to open her eyes, was that she had probably died and reached the afterlife. She was not sure, at first, why she thought this, but as her body begun to send signals about her surrounding to her brain, Jenny comprehended that it was because, for the first time in a very long time, she was utterly comfortable. She realised that even though it was autumn and she should have been cold to the bone for sleeping rough outside on the streets of London, she was, in fact, warm throughout. Unlike the hard floor surfaces upon which she was used to laying her head, her entire body seemed to be half submerged inside layers of something softer than any surface she could remember having slept on. As she inhaled deeply, breathing in the air around her, Jenny realised that the putrid smalls of sewage, waste, and grime that she would usually wake up to were gone as well, replaced by the smell of clean linen combined with a pleasing note of burning wood. 

Jenny’s second fully formed thought that morning was that she could not have reached the afterlife, actually, because this felt more like salvation than damnation, and Jenny was quite confident that her death would be greeted by the latter, and not only because she made her living by stealing from the pockets of the good people of London. 

Slowly, she dared to open her eyes a little and was immediately overwhelmed by the bright light that was shining through a large widow with heavy curtains that had been drawn open to let in the morning sun. Squinting as she adjusted to the light, Jenny took in the room around her and quickly understood that this room was certainly not one that Jenny should have been in. It seemed, in fact, to belong to a middle-class or maybe even upper-class household, perhaps a guest bedroom, or so Jenny imagined, although she had never been in a house big enough to have a guest bedroom before. The centrepiece of the room was a beautifully carved fireplace in which a strong fire was currently ablaze, but apart from a single cabinet on the wall and a bed in which, Jenny realised, she must have spent the night, the room seemed not to house any personal items or have other signs of use that Jenny would have expected to see in a room that was regularly slept in. As she sat up on the bed, Jenny observed that instead of her own clothes, she was wearing a clean white night gown that certainly did not belong to her. For a brief moment, she was mortified by the realisation that someone must have undressed her in order for her to have ended up wearing this gown, but she relaxed a little when she noticed that she was still wearing her own undergarments beneath. At least, whoever had dressed her had respected her modesty enough to not strip her entirely. 

It was only when she heard voices behind the door, two voices to be exact and both clearly female, that Jenny begun to recollect bits and pieces of the events that must have resulted in her spending the night in this highly unlikely place. She shut her eyes tightly, trying to remember, as images flashed before her, taking her back to the night before. She had been attacked on the streets by a group of men, she remembered that much for certain. She recalled her own fear, how she had felt so completely alone, and how she had been sure that there would be no escape from it, not this time. But then, something happened that stopped the attack. No, someone. Someone had stopped it, Jenny was quite sure, because she remembered the voice. She remembered being lifted up and carried in two strong arms, and she remembered the voice, because it was a woman’s voice. It was one of the voices that was coming from behind the door. 

Jenny’s head jerked up as she realised this and, looking at the door, she noticed that the door had actually been left open, not fully, but ajar enough for Jenny to be able to make out the two figures that were standing in the corridor outside the room. She had to close her eyes for a second and open them again to be sure that she saw correctly, for the two figures were among the most usual looking women she could remember encountering. Perhaps the oddest thing about them, though, was that while both were unusual, they seemed to be the polar opposites of each other. First, there was a blond woman with an uncommon, rather short haircut that ended just below her chin. She was dressed in a get up that looked like high quality men’s clothing of the kind that one might be able to buy from any good tailor in London. The way in which the clothes were assembled into an outfit, however, seemed wrong, not only because they were being worn by a woman, but also because it looked like she had simply rummaged through some random tailor shop to haphazardly pull out bits and pieces from different suits without any regard as to whether they might go together or not. The woman herself was relatively young but still clearly several years older than Jenny, yet she had an air of giddiness about her that made her seemed almost child-like. She spoke excitably and a little too loudly, seeming unable to stand still, like a little girl on Christmas day. 

By contrast, the other woman, who, Jenny realised, was the owner of the voice she remembered from the night before, seemed to be a proper Victorian lady of high class. Her countenance was still and calm, and she moved eloquently like a dancer, speaking sophisticated words in a cultured voice that had a melodic quality to it, resonating through the air like a song. She donned a magnificent dress, complete with silk gloves and ornate accessories, that clearly represented the top of the current fashion, despite being made with dark colours that some might consider rather too gloomy for a proper lady. Her face was completely covered in an opaque black veil that draped over what seemed to be an elaborate hairdo or a hat of some sort underneath. The fact that she was wearing a veil suggested to Jenny that she was, probably, recently widowed, which would also explain the dark colours of her otherwise striking garments. There was something rather intimidating about the proud way in which she held herself, however. Part of it was the fact she was very tall and had an impeccable posture which, Jenny imagined, must have meant that the woman would generally tower over most men as well as women, forcing them to look up at her while she was looking down on them. 

The two women were so different that it was as if they were from different worlds, yet they were conversing like good friends. Thought they were standing in the corridor outside the room, Jenny could make out what they were staying quite clearly due to the open door. The conversation she overheard was one that she would remember, almost word by word, for a very long time because it was by far the strangest exchange of words that she had ever heard in her entire life so far.

“Oh, this is so exciting, I’ve been waiting to see this moment for almost 200 years,” the blonde woman said, swaying on her heels slightly and tapping her hands together eagerly, with a wide grin on her face. The veiled woman gave her what Jenny imagined to be a confused look behind the veil, and Jenny expected her to question how this rather young woman could possibly have waited for anything for that length of time. The veiled woman did nothing of the sort however, and asked, instead, a question that made even less sense to Jenny than the number of years being referred to.

“Do you mean to imply that me meeting this ape now is significant for the future in your past? That seems highly unlikely.” 

The blonde woman abruptly stopped her swaying and froze for a split second, before looking at the veiled woman apologetically. “Whoops, sorry, Vastra, I shouldn’t have said that. Spoilers.” 

“Well,” the veiled woman, Vastra, said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “if an ape such as this is to be significant, I shall at least be glad it is a female. Those male apes outrage me so. I dare say, Doctor, due to that ape-like visage of yours, were you a male, I would probably have killed and then eaten you when we first encountered each other.” 

Jenny was briefly puzzled by the unusual name that the veiled woman seemed to have as well as by her reference to ‘apes,’ and concluded that the woman must be foreign, but she soon shelved these thoughts as she felt suddenly alarmed at the mention of killing and eating… did she really say eaten? Jenny begun to scan the room for possible routes of escape. 

Hearing Vastra’s words, the blond woman, who apparently was some sort of doctor although Jenny had not heard of women being doctors before, froze even further. She paused for a long moment before saying, slowly, “well, eh, Vastra, at this point, I think I should probably tell you that the next time you see me… I will be.” 

Vastra tilted her head to the side, quite like a confused dog would. “You will be what Doctor, an ape?” 

“No,” the doctor gave out a small nervous laugh, “not an ape, and they’re called humans, Vastra! But no, I mean, the next time you see me in your future, I will be a man in my past.”

Vastra was clearly taken aback by this, seeming almost as confused as Jenny felt. “Oh, you must be joking Doctor! That is ridiculous, whatever for? Why would you regenerate into a man?” 

The doctor raised her eyebrows at that and, no longer seeming neither apologetic nor nervous, placed her hands on her hips, rather resembling a teenager who was about to speak up to an adult. She stated, now rather sternly, “oh come on Vastra, really? Are you, of all people, so restricted as to be unable to see beyond gender? I’ll have you know, being a woman is actually quite unusual for me. I’ve mostly been a man, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to eat me for that when you next see me.” 

Jenny scratched her head in confusion, now more curious about the two strange women than she was afraid. Vastra stared at the doctor for several second, before chuckling lightly. “Well, it seems I will come to terms with it one day, judging by the fact that you have survived long enough to make it to the present time.” 

The doctor smiled and winked at Vastra’s, and then seemed to remember something. “Oh, talking about the present time, Vastra, I think the young woman in there deserves to know who rescued her last night.” The two women turned towards the door, and Jenny instinctively sat up straight, preparing to the faced with them. 

“Ah, you’re awake,” the doctor said happily as she walked through the door. She proceeded to skip towards the bed and hop onto it in a way that made the whole mattress bounce a little. “I’m the Doctor,” she said, sitting down next to Jenny on the sheets. “We met last night but I’m not sure you remember, you passed out quite hard after being ruffed up by those dudes. I’m so sorry that happened to you, Jenny. It’s really nice to meet you though.” She smiled widely and extended her hand, clearly expecting Jenny to shake it, but Jenny just stared. “You’re a doctor? I didn’t know women can be doctors, and how do ya know my name? I don’t think I’ve told ya my name.” 

The doctor pulled her hand away, but her smile did not falter. “I’m not a doctor, I’m the Doctor, and this is Vastra,” she said, pointing behind her to the general direction where Vastra stood without taking her eyes off Jenny. She ignored Jenny’s question about how she knew her name. Then, quite suddenly, the tone of her voice changed drastically, the smile fading away, as she continued, with a soberness that was very much at odds with her previous giddiness. “Vastra saved you last night, and that means you owe her a debt, Jenny. You owe her your life. I think that also means that you deserve to know each other, she deserves to know who you are, and you deserve to know who she is behind that veil of hers, but you also need to respect her for who she is.” 

Jenny was taken aback by the seriousness with which the woman now spoke, her child-like demeanour gone like it had never been there at all. Tentatively, Jenny looked more closely into the Doctor’s eyes, and the depth of the green she saw there, streaked with lines of hazelnut brown almost rough around the edges, made her question her initial estimate of the woman’s age. Her eyes were old, impossibly old. Much older than the rest of her seemed to be. In truth, as the Doctor gazed into her, seemingly able to look past Jenny’s eyes all the way into her very soul, Jenny felt like she was being swallowed into an abyss older than the land upon which they stood. And she was afraid, she realised, of the unbelievable depth in those green eyes. It frightened her more than the prospect of being faced with whatever it was that lay hidden underneath the veil of the man eating woman called Vastra. 

“Vastra is going to take off her veil now, so that you can see her face, Jenny. She might look a bit different to you at first, but I promise that you’ll get used to it,” the Doctor said. Jenny struggled but managed to peel her eyes away from the Doctor’s to look at Vastra instead. As she did so, she heard Vastra sighing deeply. “Are you certain about this Doctor,” Vastra asked, even as she moved her gloved hand up to grasp at the thin but impervious fabric on her head. “Quite,” the Doctor responded, and Vastra signed a second time. She pulled at the material, sliding the veil over what Jenny had thought was an elaborate hair piece, and then down across her face. 

By this point, Jenny had concluded that either she was going mad, or it was the two strange women, the Doctor and Vastra, that were mad. Despite having properly lost her consciousness the night before, Jenny had been leaning much more towards the latter possibility, but this quickly changed as Vastra pulled the veil entirely off to uncover her face. 

All Jenny could do was stare, utterly stunned. Vastra had no hair piece. As a matter of fact, Vastra had no hair at all. Instead, protruding from her skull were three tall crests that sat high over her head like a crown, stretching behind her face and breaking into several smaller crests at the back of her neck in a way that made her head appear slightly elongated. Her face was adorned with green scales that seemed to cover her entirely, like a reptile. They shimmered like jewels in the morning light, transitioning smoothly from thicker and darker colored plates at the center of her forehead and at the side of her cheeks and crests to more delicate and lighter emerald green scales around her mouth and eyes. The eyes themselves were a piercing cerulean blue, a surprising contrast to the varied greens that surrounded them, Jenny found herself thinking as she took in the incredible sight before her. Oddly, as she looked on, the only coherent thought that came into her mind was that this creature was remarkably beautiful, albeit decidedly not human. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words were forthcoming. 

“Do not be frightened, I will not harm you,” Vastra said quickly, taking a step back away from Jenny and lifting her hands up slightly with her palms facing forward, as if to gesture peaceful intentions. 

“I’m not scared,” Jenny said instinctively, realising only afterwards that it was, in fact, true. She was not afraid. She was, however, curious. “Are you… real?” Jenny asked, immediately appreciating how nuts that question sounded. Rubbing her temples, she added, more to herself than anyone else, “I’m seein’ things… beautiful lizard ladies… I’m goin’ mad.” 

Vastra tilted her head again, and now, without the veil hiding her features, Jenny could see the combination of surprise and confusion across Vastra’s face. Then, something long and pink slithered out of Vastra’s mouth, flickering in the air for less than a second, before it quickly retreated back into her mouth. Jenny’s own mouth opened in astonishment when she realised that what she had just seen was Vastra’s tongue. It was like the tongue of a snake, with a forked tip, and Vastra seemed to have used it for the same purpose as a snake would, to taste the air around her. For some reason that she could not quite explain, Jenny felt herself blush.

“See! I told you she’d take it well,” the Doctor said happily, and she bounced up and down on the bed a little, smiling brightly. Her childlikeness seemed to have returned again, making Jenny almost as perplexed by her as she was by Vastra. Almost.

“How can this be real? I’ve never seen anythin’ like ya before,” Jenny said, mostly to herself again, but this time Vastra answered her. 

“You have not seen anyone like me before because all of my people are currently hidden away deep beneath our feet in a kind of slumber that has lasted for billions of years,” Vastra said, in rather matter of fact way, albeit eyeing Jenny with curiosity. “I myself am an exception, as I was awoken, quite against my will I might add, by an extension to the London underground. I can assure you, however, that I am indeed quite real.” Vastra paused for a moment to give Jenny a tentative smile. “My people are a species of intelligent reptilians that once ruled the Earth during the reign of the dinosaurs, well before your own species had evolved. We had a civilization far technologically superior to your own, which enabled us to foresee a celestial threat and protect ourselves by going under a deep sleep beneath the surface of the Earth when a large asteroid was to make impact with the planet. It could have caused our extinction as well as that of many other species.” 

Jenny did not understand everything that Vastra was saying and, in fact, she was still not convinced that any of what she had experienced within the last half hour or so was real, but she decided to just go with it for the time being, thinking she might soon wake up to discover it was all a weird dream anyways. 

“So,” she started, her eyes darting between Vastra and the Doctor as she was trying to wrap her head around it. “You’re a lizard woman from the dawn of time,” Jenny said, pointing towards Vastra, who tilted her head again, looking as if she was trying to figure Jenny out as much as Jenny was trying to figure her out. “And you…” Jenny continued, now pointing at the Doctor, who was still sitting on the bed next to her, “you’re the Doctor, not a doctor, but the Doctor, and you used to be a man, and you’ve waited to be ‘ere for 200 years, which means ya must’ve lived at least as long as that.” The Doctor nodded enthusiastically, her smile as bright as ever. “Exactly,” she exclaimed and almost beamed with delight as she added, “see, Vastra, how observant she is, she’s prefect for you!” 

Both Vastra and Jenny turned to look at the Doctor with raised brows. 

“I mean,” the Doctor clarified quickly, “she’s the perfect maid for you, you should hire her! You need a maid, don’t you Vastra? This house is a right mess, no offence, but it is. And Jenny needs a job, don’t you Jenny?” 

Jenny slowly turned to look at Vastra, who was starting at the Doctor, apparently lost for words due to shock at hearing such an idea. For approximately five seconds, the room fell silent as Vastra and the Doctor stared each other down and Jenny engaged in a silent mental debate with herself as she considered the Doctor’s suggestion. She quickly weighed the disadvantage of being employed by a pre-historic reptilian creature who might literally eat her alive against the benefits of a fine honest job that would take her off the streets, give her a warm place to stay at night and maybe even some food with which to fill her belly. Jenny swiftly concluded that the benefits outweighed the disadvantage. Besides, the whole thing might still turn out to be dream, so…

“I do,” Jenny said, breaking the silence louder than she had intended, and both Vastra and the Doctor turned to look at her. “I do need a job, I mean,” Jenny added, as she attempted to morph her face into an expression that mimicked the subservient faces that Jenny had seen on the ladies’ maids whose pockets she had picked regularly for years. The job of a housemaid in a house as grand as this one seemed to be was above Jenny’s social standing. But Jenny was, indeed, observant, and had been watching and learning about the behaviour of all manner of house servants as they walked the streets of London to run errands and purchase goods on their employers’ behalf, with pockets full of coin for Jenny to steal. Now though, Jenny applied what she had learned from observing them to take on as much of their body language and mannerisms as she could. 

Sitting up as straight on the bed as she could, Jenny lowered her gaze to Vastra’s feet and addressed her with a tone that she hoped would sound compliant yet eager to please. “Ma’am, if it would please you, I’m no stranger to hard workin’ and will fulfil my duties without complaint if you’ll have me in your employ.” 

“Yes, she will,” the Doctor declared eagerly and stood up from the bed, walking over to Vastra to give her a jolly pat on the arm. Vastra glared at the Doctor with an expression that would have made most people freeze in fear or run for their lives. The Doctor pulled her hand away quickly but smiled at Vastra, nonetheless. 

“You will?” Jenny asked, with a hopeful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“I will?” Vastra asked in turn, seeming more annoyed at the prospect than anything else. 

“Yes, she absolutely will,” the Doctor stated definitively, looking from Vastra to Jenny and back again with an expression of utter joy in her face that did not at all fit the general atmosphere in the room.


	2. Chapter two

Until Vastra brought her home, Jenny had always been poor. She has been born as the third child of a family of five children, but two of her siblings had died before Jenny reached the age of six. The remaining children were all expected to contribute towards her family’s income, and while her two brothers worked as climbing boys for chimney sweeps and ran errands for shopkeepers, Jenny was put to work as a match girl as soon as she was old enough to know how to light a match. She spent most of her childhood roaming the streets of East London selling matches, coming home only when absolutely necessary to sleep, eat a meager meal, or find some respite from the rain or cold during autumn and winter. This was mostly because there was very little space for her in the crammed single room living arrangement that her entire family shared with a lodger, whom they had taken on to help pay for the rent. Jenny quite liked the lodger though because, unlike every other adult in her life, the lodger seemed to take a liking to Jenny’s wild side. “You’re a clever girl, Jenny,” he would say. Unlike Jenny’s parents, he was also quite good with letters, and one evening every week, he would take out the small battered bible that was his most precious possession, and spend an hour with Jenny to teach her letters and, eventually, how to put them together to form words. 

When she was fifteen, Jenny was unceremoniously thrown onto the streets – quite literally, in fact – by her father, after he saw Jenny kissing another girl. The whole thing had been a case of extremely bad luck on Jenny’s part. While it was not the first time that Jenny had kissed a girl, and while Jenny was entirely aware that what she did with other girls was very much unacceptable, she had been careful to conduct her business in dark alleyways far away from where her family lived. She had never developed the attraction for boys that most other girls seemed to have done, but she had developed an attraction to girls, and wandering the dirty streets of London East End, she sometimes found other girls as deviant or at least as curious as herself. Her encounters with these girls never went beyond kissing and the occasional experimental fondling through clothing, but she knew that if she was caught in the act, the consequences would be dire. This was especially true as she was getting older, and her parents were expecting her to find a man, move out, and build a family of her own soon.

During one faithful evening, caught she was. Jenny’s father did not have regular employment, but he picked up whatever job he could get whenever he could get it, and, unbeknownst to Jenny, that day, her father had secured some seasonal work at the docks, helping to load off containers of various goods coming into London from overseas. He was therefore walking home from an unusual direction, happening upon Jenny in the midst of her sinful behavior quite by coincidence. That coincidence, however, cost Jenny dearly. She lost, not only her family, but also the roof that she had so far always had over her head, despite how crowded the living conditions, as well as the two meals a day that the combined efforts of her whole family put on their small table most days. Instead, Jenny was left to fend for herself, the only reminder of her parents being the worn out clothes that her mother had sewn together for her and the bruises and bust lip that her father gave her before telling her that she was from the devil and that he wished she had died instead of the other two children he had already lost. 

For the next three years, Jenny was, for the most part, homeless. Even before she was kicked out from home, Jenny had been getting a bit too old to be a good match girl. The good people of London took pity on the younger match girls and were more likely to buy from them than from a teenage girl almost old enough to make a wife. So, Jenny changed her trade and made a living mostly through petty theft. She learned the craft of pickpocketing by necessity during her first months on the streets, when she realised that her only other feasible options were the workhouse, prostitution, or starvation. Pickpocketing was the most attractive option by miles and, as she soon discovered, Jenny had a knack for it too. Jenny had always known that she was largely invisible to most of the people who were well off enough to walk around with some coin in their pockets or other valuables in their person. Most of them did not spare even a glance let alone a thought to a girl like her, with raggedy clothes, dirty hands, and knotted hair. This, however, came as an advantage to Jenny now because she was able to observe people, scanning their clothing for any signs of valuables from coin to a watch or a handkerchief, largely unnoticed. Once she found a good target, all Jenny had to do was to apply some sleight of hand as she walked by – her small size and fast, dexterous fingers enabled her to manoeuvre all manner of items from unsuspecting Londoners, especially in busy public places where she could swiftly disappear into the crowd afterwards. 

Sometimes, Jenny managed to steal enough money to pay for a few nights’ lodgings on the floor of a small room, wedged between the bodies of other poor folk who shared the room with her for the night. Most of the time, however, she rested her head on benches, doorways, and, when she was lucky, stairwells. It was through such rough sleeping that she met and made some friends among other girls and young women who, like herself, had no one but themselves to rely on, and made their living mostly through a combination of petty theft and prostitution. 

There was one girl in particular with whom Jenny developed a close friendship and, for a year or so, the two of them worked together to survive the streets. Jenny soon realised that this girl, Annie, was, like Jenny herself, a clever one, especially in the art of misdirection, which was very useful when combined with Jenny’s own skill in moving her small hands swiftly and unnoticed from one pocket to another. Jenny and Annie developed a sort of double act where Annie would cause some distraction and Jenny would pick the pockets of the bystanders while their attention was directed towards Annie. The girls would then share the proceeds, laughing over a hot cup of tea and a slice of pie divided into two equal halves as they recounted the events of the day and planned their next scheme. Jenny took great pleasure in knowing that while Annie had many pursuers among young men, some of whom even made an honest albeit modest living, Annie preferred to make her own way with Jenny instead of choosing one of them to settle and have children with. “I’m already poor, don’t want ta loose me freedom as well,” Annie would say. 

Often, when the nights were especially cold, and they could not afford a roof over their heads, Jenny and Annie would huddle together both for warmth and protection. They would generally favour places where other homeless youth had also gathered to sleep, mostly because, as Jenny had learned early on, the streets of London were dangerous at night and there was safety in numbers. Sometimes, however, there was just the two of them, and Jenny would pull Annie close, wrapping her arms around Annie’s thin frame to share her body heat, even though it was not just her body heat that Jenny wanted to share. 

Then, during one particularly cold and lonely night about a year after Jenny and Annie had begun spending their time together, the two girls engaged in another means of generating warmth as well as comfort. Jenny had pressed her own body tightly against Annie’s, as she often did, to warm up, while running her fingers against Annie’s arm, quite innocently – just to calm her as she was shivering in the cold. When Jenny shifted her position to get more comfortable against the hard floor, however, she accidentally brushed her fingers against Annie’s breasts. She was about to apologise but before she had the time to do so, she heard Annie give out a soft whimper and Jenny felt her own body being pressed more firmly against Annie’s as Annie grabbed her waist to pull her in even closer. That night, Jenny learned for the first time how wonderful it felt to have another woman’s fingers upon her most sensitive parts. She learned how wonderful it was to run her own fingers between the soft folds of another, to feel her wetness coat her hand, and watch her tremble as pleasure overtook Annie’s hardened face, made coarse by poverty and hardship. For a brief moment, when she touched Annie like this, the harsh life that she was forced to lead on the streets was flushed out of Jenny’s mind and replaced by real happiness. 

When Jenny woke up the next morning, however, Annie was gone. It took Jenny a full two weeks of searching for her, first in all their usual hangouts, then across the city, asking around and walking up and down the winding alleyways, to find her again. When she finally did, Annie averted her eyes and would not let Jenny come close enough to touch. “I’m not like that,” she told Jenny, her face twisting into an expression of disgust, “it’s wrong, it’s… sick, wha’ we… wha’ you did ta me, I know, you put the devil in me… You make me sick Jenny.” With these words, Annie walked away, leaving Jenny standing on the street corner with tears burning in her eyes. It was the last time Jenny ever saw Annie, although a month later, she heard word on the street that Annie had agreed to marry some bloke, the son of a costermonger they said, who had bought her a brass ring and all. Annie was moving up in the world, Jenny was told. 

With Annie gone, Jenny was left alone again, for the same reason as before, although this time, she vouched to herself to never again reveal her true desires to anyone. Annie had been right, after all, Jenny concluded. Jenny knew that what she wanted from other women – to touch them, to feel them, to love them like she should love a man – was wrong and probably from the devil too. Though Jenny had not spent much time reflecting on what might happen to her once she would die, undoubtedly on the streets from the cold or disease, Jenny knew that hell is where she was destined to go. When she was a child, the lodger in her family home had taught her to read from the bible, and though Jenny had not fully understood what she was reading, she had learned enough to accept that damnation was to be her faith. Her desire to survive was stronger than her desire to follow the divine commandment not to steal, and her desire for women was stronger than her willpower to control her thoughts when they began to lead her astray, towards things that were forbidden. 

Without Annie, Jenny became increasingly lonely and low in spirit. Her life begun to feel like there was little in it that made it worthwhile. At least being with Annie had given her days some substance and purpose. She had some other friends on the streets, but she found less and less enjoyment in spending time with them and became withdrawn, barely having the motivation to pick enough pockets to feed herself. There were many days when she went without a morsel to eat, and as her strength decreased, so did her wits, which made the streets even more dangerous to her at night than they usually were. 

Before the night when Jenny was attacked and then rescued by Vastra, there had been some dangerous situations where Jenny only nearly missed becoming a victim of assault. She had only managed to escape these situations before because she had not been entirely alone, and because she was able to think and move fast, screaming for help and fighting her way out of the men’s grasp with her quick reflexes, sharp punches and kicks. But that night, Jenny was alone, weaker than usual, and slow from hunger, cold, and depression that dulled her senses, making her too exhausted to resist and fight like she would otherwise have when the men literally dragged her to a dark alleyway, roughed her up, and begun to pull up her skirts. At that moment, Jenny was sure that this was it, that this time, there was nothing short of a miracle that would save her, so she squeezed her eyes shut and hardened her emotions in preparation for what was to come, focusing all her efforts into disconnecting her mind from her body in order to feel as little of it all as she possibly could. 

But then, instead of pain, she felt the men loosen their hold on her and letting go of her altogether at the same time as sharp screams of terror filled the air. The screams lasted only a second or two, and they were followed by a series of soft thumps, like limp bodies falling to the ground, before everything fell silent. Jenny was still squeezing her eyes shot, frozen on the spot both by fear and surprise that made her unable to move a muscle, when she heard a voice, a woman’s voice that sounded like a melody, asking whether she was all right. A gloved hand landed on her shoulder, softly and with kindness that was in stark contrast to the violent grasps of the men who had held her against her will only moments before. Jenny felt her body relax into this touch, the adrenaline that had been coursing through her veins releasing its hold on her, and then, everything went black. 

Jenny knew that she had been carried after passing out because she remembered feeling herself being hoisted up and held in someone’s arms, but the memory was blurry. Then, the next thing Jenny knew was that she had woken up in Vastra’s guest bedroom, to a new and, it seemed, better even if very strange life. There is no way she could have foreseen how much better and stranger it would get over time.


	3. Chapter three

It did not take very long for Jenny to realise that becoming the maid of the ancient, oversized man eating reptilian was by far the best things that had ever happened to her. It was not just the fact that she had a roof over her head and a warm place to lay down every night as well as a guaranteed supply of food. No, it was much more than that. 

Most astonishing for Jenny was the fact that, for the first time in her life, she had a room of her own. Not just any room, but the very room in which she had spent her first night in Vastra’s house. The Doctor, Jenny soon learned, had only been visiting Vastra for a few days, although the reason for her visit remained unclear to Jenny – apparently, it had not been just a social call but her purpose had been to “lead Vastra down the right path, literally,” whatever that meant. After making sure that Vastra agreed, albeit begrudgingly, to take Jenny on as her maid, the Doctor had declared that Jenny would need a room, and that this room would do nicely. She had then promptly departed, leaving a displeased Vastra and an astonished Jenny to face up to their new living arrangement on their own, telling the two them to “take good care of each other.” Vastra had rolled her eyes and left Jenny to get acquainted with her new room, which was almost the same size as the room her entirely family plus the lodger had shared when she was a child. Jenny could barely believe it. An entire room, all to herself. 

After Jenny had dressed herself and made her way downstairs, her new mistress had pushed an envelope of banknotes into Jenny’s hand that was worth several months of wages for a regular labouring man. Oblivious to the disbelief in Jenny’s eyes as she stared inside the envelope, Vastra instructed Jenny to commence her duties as maid by taking a trip to the city to purchase high quality maid’s uniforms, proper shoes, and a good winter coat with gloves as well as cleaning supplies and other miscellaneous items that a maid might need. “Ma’am, I can’t pay you back this kind o’ money for clothes,” Jenny warned her quietly, holding the money at arm’s length as if it was dangerous somehow. Giving her a mildly irritated kind of glace, Vastra had responded, simply, “and I cannot have my maid walking around in rags. It shall be your duty to care for this house, and it shall be my duty to ensure you appear presentable as you do so.” 

Turning swiftly on her heels, Vastra had headed towards the room located below the stairs, leaving Jenny to try and come to grips with the amount of money she was holding. Just as Vastra was about to close the door of the room, however, she paused suddenly, as if remembering something. “Oh, and please make sure to also purchase some of that ghastly substance that apes call food. Cabbage and such. I am afraid you will find little here at present that would be suitable for your own needs. Use the back door when you return.” With that, Vastra closed the door behind her while Jenny briefly puzzled over the odd remark about ‘ape food’ before heading for the back door, which lead into the kitchen, to use it to exist as well, like a good maid should. As she did so, she noted that Vastra seemed to keep it unlocked. 

Jenny spent most of her first day in a general state of disbelief at her change of fortune as she hurried from the tailor to the shoemaker to the market, handing out Vastra’s money in exchange for so many packages that she struggled to carry it all back to 13 Paternoster Row, her new home. She had a home.

It was only when she entered through the kitchen door, as instructed, and laid all the shopping onto the small table there, that Jenny realised it was almost dinner time and, as maid, it would be her duty to prepare her lady’s dinner. Jenny was rather nervous about this for she was not a good cook – there had never been much occasion in her life to learn the skill. Nonetheless, she quickly put away the parcels, deposited the leftover money on the dining room table, and changed into one of her new uniforms, spending a minute attempting to smooth over her hair as much as possible. She then tentatively walked towards the door behind which Vastra had disappeared earlier and, taking a deep breath, knocked. 

Hearing a distracted “entre,” echo from the room, Jenny opened the door to discover that she was standing on the doorway of an incredibly messy and disorganised looking office. There were files and books and seemingly disconnected pieces of scribbled on paper all over the large wooden desk as well as the floor, with Vastra leaning over them with a concentrated expression, as if she was making sense of it all. “Ma’am, may I prepare you somethin’ ta eat, it’s almost dinner time,” Jenny asked, noticing that Vastra looked quite charming, sitting there all focused and collected amidst the general state of chaos. “You need not worry about my dinner Jenny,” Vastra said without looking up from her work. “My diet consists exclusively of raw meat and blood, neither of which requires preparation. There is a butcher delivery every Monday. All you need to do with it is to place it in the larder when it arrives.” 

Jenny was only briefly taken aback by this information, but quickly recovered when she realised that raw meat and blood from the butchers was much preferable to the possibility of Vastra eating humans and drinking their blood for dinner. Vastra’s earlier comment about ‘ghastly ape food’ also made more sense now. Determined to be a good maid irrespective of how peculiar her employer tastes were, Jenny suggested, “perhaps you’d like me ta bring some o’ that raw meat and blood here for ya, so you can keep at your work but also have yer dinner on time.” 

Vastra looked up from her papers, her startling blue eyes landing on Jenny for the first time since Jenny knocked on her office door, and Jenny felt herself grow a little nervous as she noticed that Vastra seemed to do a double take when she saw her. Vastra paused for a moment, her eyes travelling from Jenny’s face across her body to her new shoes and back up again, making Jenny blush. For a second, Vastra’s lips seemed to curl up slightly as if she wanted to smile, but the curl quickly faded, and she said nothing about Jenny’s cleaned up appearance. Her voice was softer when she answered, however. “Yes, Jenny, that would do nicely. If you are prepared to handle it, I would prefer a serving of sheep brain with a glass of blood, both of which you will find in the larder.” Jenny curtsied to the best of her ability, with a polite “yes ma’am.” As she made to leave the room, Vastra added, “oh, and Jenny, I would love a cup of tea.” 

Jenny discovered that Vastra’s meals were by far the easiest part of her job. Firstly, Vastra seemed to eat less that people generally did, requiring only one meal a day and sometimes skipping food altogether despite the fact that she was more than wealthy enough to eat as much top quality meat as she liked. Secondly, all Jenny needed to do to ‘prepare’ Vastra’s meals was to place some un-cooked meat on a plate, pour blood in a glass, and take it to Vastra’s office, which is where her new mistress spent most of her time, though doing what exactly, Jenny did not know, and to be honest, whatever it was, Jenny did not mind. Jenny was not squeamish at all, so she did not mind handling the meat either. Although dealing with the blood did take some getting used to, Jenny was mostly just relieved that she was not expected to know how to cook. The only human beverage that Vastra seemed to enjoy was tea, and during her first week, Jenny learned that Vastra consumed very high quantities of it, so she made a mental note to ensure that the kitchen would always be well stocked with tea. 

Apart from asking Jenny to take good care of mending the fires and to make sure that the house was always warm, Vastra gave Jenny very little instruction as to what her maid duties were, beyond the vague request for Jenny to ‘care for the house.’ When Jenny asked what kinds of tasks Vastra would prefer her to prioritise, Vastra shrugged her shoulders and said indifferently, “do whatever you would be expected to do in any other household but do it quietly, and do not touch anything in my office.” 

So, Jenny decided to set her own priorities, beginning with cleaning the house from top to bottom. 

Vastra’s house was much grander than any house Jenny had even dared to even dream of living in and it would have been, for most people, hard to believe that a house like this had no servants, apart from herself now of course. When Jenny walked through the many rooms and hallways, she was initially overwhelmed by the amount of work she expected it would take for her to thoroughly clean it all, though it seemed that the majority of the rooms were not in use. There were beautiful marble statues, paintings, and intricately carved wooden furniture everywhere, but they were all covered in a thick layer of dust. Aligning most walls, there were bookshelves with volumes upon volumes of printed word ranging from science to mathematics to literature, and while Jenny could slowly spell out the titles of some of them, many seemed to be written in languages Jenny did not understand. There were even a few that, despite being written in English, had odd bindings and titles that seemed to make no sense, like The Changing City: A History of London from 1900 to 2050, even though, as far as Jenny knew, they had not even reached 1900 yet – the year at present was 1886. Curious, Jenny dared to pick up another large book titled Human Reproductive Biology off a shelf. She opened it to random page, and immediately felt her face grow bright red from embarrassment when she saw the words ‘female external genitalia’ printed next to a large picture that seemed to be a painting so accurate Jenny would have thought it to be a photograph were it not in colour. Jenny slammed the book closed and quickly showed it back in the self. With a shake of her head, Jenny brought her mind back to her work. She estimated that dusting all the bookshelves alone would take her two weeks, at least. 

The most intriguing part of the house, for Jenny, was a large room at the back that was entirely filled with plants and flowers of the most exotic kind that Jenny had even seen. The room seemed to be almost entirely built out of glass, allowing natural light to fill the space and illuminate the plants’ many bright colours. Despite its beauty, though, the room was almost unbearably hot, which was made even worse by the humidity that seemed to hang in the air, making it dense and heavy, like standing in a transparent cloud of fog. The uncomfortable quality of air was just as well, though, because, while Jenny was not forbidden from entering the room, the lady of the house certainly did not encourage her to do so either. Vastra was, actually, rather protective of the space, and one of the few instructions she gave Jenny was to abstain from watering the plants as she preferred to care for them herself. “Wha’ is this place,” Jenny had asked in amazement when Vastra first showed her the room. “It is a greenhouse by structure and function, but more importantly, by purpose, it is my refuge,” Vastra responded. The longer Jenny stayed in Vastra’s employ, the more she learned to respect the space almost like it was an extension of Vastra herself.

Jenny found that she rather enjoyed her work, at least in comparison with the kinds of work she had done before. It was not only honest work but also quite rewarding as Jenny could see the results of her labour reflected in the polished surfaces and shining floors throughout the house. After finishing her initial deep clean, Jenny established a routine to maintain the general state of cleanliness. She found that, despite the size of the house, she was able to do the upkeep on her own just fine, owing much to the fact that most of the house was unused so required the bare minimum of weekly maintenance, while the only other inhabitant in addition to Jenny herself generally kept her mess confined inside the walls of her study. Jenny’s biggest daily chore was tending to the fires, especially during the winter months, because, as Vastra wanted the main rooms thoroughly heated at all times, carrying the firewood up and down the stairs and cleaning the ashes was no mean feat. Jenny undertook all of her duties with great diligence, working ten hours a day to keep the house to as high a standard as possible by a single person, but rarely received thanks for her efforts. She did, however, often receive subtle glances from Vastra, especially when Jenny brought in her meal or a tea service to her office. Jenny would lean over to place the tray on the low table next to Vastra’s desk, and as she did so, Jenny could see from the corner of her eye how Vastra’s gaze would travel over her legs and backside, never lingering but only peeking quickly, as if in secret. When Jenny lifted herself upright, Vastra’s eyes had always returned to her papers again, as if they had never strayed from them at all. 

By the time she had spent the full winter on 13 Paternoster Row, Jenny had begun to often wonder about the reasons for why Vastra was so adamant on the fires in the house. Indeed, Vastra spent twice as much money on firewood as one would expect for a house the size of 13 Paternoster Row, despite the fact that this house had only two inhabitants. To be honest, the longer Jenny spent working for Vastra, the more she wondered about all manner of things to do with her mysterious employer. Perhaps it was not surprising that Jenny would spend time thinking about her, not only because she was her lady and her job was to attend to her needs, but also because Vastra was by far the most fascinating person in all of London and beyond, Jenny was quite sure of that. 

Firstly, there was the fact that Vastra was not human. This was clear not just from her remarkable appearance and her snake like tongue, which would, every now again, flicker out to taste the air, making Jenny blush for reasons she was still unable to determine exactly. In addition to that though, the fact that Vastra was not human was also clear from her limited grasp on the kinds of social skill and etiquette that were a central part of interactions between humans. Vastra kept mostly to herself, which meant that conversations between Jenny and Vastra were generally infrequent, and when they occurred, usually brief and formal. The conversations that they did share, though, had proven Vastra to be rather insensitive in her statements about ‘apes’ and their ‘primitive society,’ among other things. While Vastra’s blunt manner had been infuriating to Jenny at first, she got used to it quite quickly and by the end of the winter, it had become such a regular part of her life that Jenny simply rolled her eyes at Vastra’s comments and got on with her day. 

Apart from that, there was also the fact that Jenny still was not sure what exactly it was that Vastra did in her office all day. Her study was the only room that Jenny was not allowed to clean or spend time in, and even though Jenny often visited the room to bring Vastra her tea and meals, she never had a reason to stay long enough to be able to make sense of the words that were scribbled on the many sheets of paper that cluttered the room, mostly because they were written in Vastra’s elaborate but rather cryptic hand. Often, when Jenny entered, Vastra was leaning over some file or another, and Jenny could make out that there were usually photographs inside, of objects ranging from mundane everyday items to what looked like dismembered body parts. As soon as Jenny approached her, however, Vastra would quickly close the file before Jenny had the change to take a proper look. 

While Vastra was locked in her office most days and spent most evenings in the greenhouse, sometimes, she would spend the entire day out of the house without giving Jenny any clue concerning where she might have gone. Every now and again, she would leave the house late in the evening only to return during the early hours of the morning, never giving Jenny any warning before she went or indication as to where she was going or when to expect her back home. Jenny knew that it was none of her business, but she increasingly found herself worrying about Vastra’s wellbeing, especially when she ventured out at night. Jenny reasoned that it was only sensible for her to worry because she depended on Vastra for employment, but if she was honest with herself, Jenny had to admit that her worry was mostly born out of genuine care for the woman, despite her many strange and annoying qualities.

Whenever Vastra went out during the night, Jenny had trouble sleeping and her throughs tended to drift back to the night when Vastra had rescued her. She had never asked but was nonetheless quite sure that Vastra had killed those men who attacked her, and she wondered whether Vastra’s nightly activities in general had something to do with that sort of thing. She had had the opportunity to watch Vastra at work in her office and observe her comings and goings for long enough now that it was not difficult for Jenny to deduce that Vastra’s work had something to do with the more violent criminal element in London, although Jenny was not sure whether Vastra was on the side of the law or against it. To be frank, she did not actually care that much one way or another. What she did care about more and more, though, was that Vastra returned home safe and sound at the end of it. 

Sometimes, Jenny thought about the blurry memory she had of being lifted and carried by Vastra that night when she brought her home to 13 Paternoster Row. She closed her eyes and tried to bring back the feeling of those strong arms around her, holding her, knowing that it was Vastra’s arms. She found an odd sense of comfort at the thought of being held by Vastra and, even though she knew it was not proper, a desire to be held by her again. There was something about Vastra’s arms that pulled her in and made her feel like she belonged in her embrace. Although she could not quite pinpoint what it was, she was quite confident that she should not feel that way about her employer. She should not feel that way about any woman, least a lizard woman from the dawn of time.


	4. Chapter four

There was one weekend in March, after Jenny had been in Vastra’s employ for six months almost exactly, when Jenny learned more about Vastra in two days than she had since the day they first met. 

Vastra had been out for the night, doing whatever it was that she was doing when she left the house at a late hour. While the early spring air had been quite mild when Vastra departed, the temperature plummeted later in the evening, making the night unusually cold for that time of the year. Jenny was not expecting Vastra to return before dawn, but she had trouble sleeping, like she usually did when Vastra was out at night. It was because of this that she was sitting over the small the kitchen table with a cup of tea just after midnight when Vastra came home early, stumbling into the kitchen through the back door. 

Jenny’s felt a flush of alarm run through her and settle into a knot in her stomach at the sight of Vastra. Jenny had only ever seen Vastra strong, calm and collected but now, she was unsteady on her feet and nearly fell when she stepped inside, lurching forward to grasp the kitchen counter in order to prevent herself from toppling over. As she pulled off her veil and Jenny saw her face, the knot in her stomach tightened further. Vastra’s usually vivid green colour seemed to have faded into a pale hue, and her eyes were dull and lidded as if she was struggling to keep them open. Jenny gasped loudly and her hands flew to cover her mouth as if to stop herself from crying out when she saw that the entire length of Vastra’s right arm was covered in blood. There were rips and tears of different sizes across her sleeve, and when Jenny’s eyes focused on them, she realised that there were splinters of what looked like broken pieces of glass embedded in Vastra’s skin. 

“Ma’am!” Jenny yelped as she jumped to her feet and ran to Vastra, throwing her arm around Vastra waist and slinging her uninjured arm over her own shoulder to support Vastra’s body. She seemed to be having difficulty holding herself upright. 

“Jenny,” Vastra observed, her voice drowsy but also surprised, as Jenny begun to half carry her towards the drawing room, which was the closest room with a settee upon which Jenny could lay her down. “Why are you awake, the hour must be late,” Vastra muttered, her eyes beginning to drift closed. “Wha’ ta hell happened to ya,” Jenny asked, ignoring Vastra’s question. There was panic in her voice as she realised that Vastra may be about to lose consciousness. 

Jenny hurried her steps despite struggling under Vastra’s weight, her muscles straining from the effort when she hoisted Vastra onto the settee. “I am fine Jenny,” Vastra said, even as she closed her eyes entirely and her body slumped over limply, seeming to be entirely devoid its usual strength. “Clearly not,” Jenny muttered in high pitch, mostly to herself, as she realised that she needed to uncover Vastra’s arm to tend to the injury but removing her coat and shirts would be both time consuming and difficult due to the many layers Vastra was wearing as well as the injury itself. Thinking fast, Jenny jumped up and ran to fetch the poultry shears that she had acquired for the purpose of cutting Vastra’s meat. Careful not to injure Vastra any further, she swiftly cut through the fabric of Vastra’s sleeves, peeling them off her skin all at once to reveal the extent of the damage. 

A small whinge escaped her throat when she saw what must have been about a dozen cuts, all coated with blood, running from Vastra shoulder to her wrist, many of which still had shreds of glass lodged inside, though it looked like some larger shreds had already been ripped off by force, probably by Vastra herself. As Jenny took hold of Vastra’s arm to examine it, she noticed that the scales were unnaturally cold. Instinctively, she pressed her palm against Vastra’s pale cheek and panicked when she realised that Vastra’s face was cold as ice. “Ma’am, yer freezin’, wha’ happened,” she almost yelled, and panicked further when Vastra did not respond. She grabbed Vastra’s shoulders and shook her roughly, her voice rising even louder. “Ma’am!” Vastra stirred a little at the rough treatment, and her eyelids fluttered but did not open, though she seemed to gain enough awareness to respond. “It was colder than I thought… it made me slow… I am cold blooded, Jenny, I just need to get warm,” she muttered. 

Suddenly, a realisation hit Jenny like a bolt. Of course, it made sense now. Vastra’s insistence on keeping the house warm, all the firewood, the hot tea, the unbearable atmosphere in the greenhouse that Vastra seemed to not just tolerate but actually enjoy. Jenny had never been to school, but she had heard the phrase ‘cold blooded’ before, and she knew that the reason why lizards where nowhere to be seen during winter was that they could not survive in the cold. She also knew that Vastra was a lizard, of sorts.

Jenny’s eyes moved slowly from the settee on which Vastra lay to the fireplace across the room, and she realised that more important than tending to Vastra’s wounds was to get her body closer to the fire. With a deep inhale of breath, Jenny summoned as much strength as she could muster from her small frame. She grabbed a tight hold of Vastra’s torso, edging her arms beneath her body and across her back, and lifted. It took all her strength, but Jenny managed to pull Vastra’s limp body off the settee, drag her across the floor, and onto the rug that was laid in front the fireplace. She then pushed Vastra as close to the heat as she could without burning her. 

Once satisfied with Vastra’s positioning, Jenny turned her attention back to the wounds. She had witnessed her fair share of injuries during her time on the streets, including some relatively serious ones, and she had a basic idea of what needed to be done about them. She knew that if the cuts were not tended to, they could soon become infected, and to mitigate against that, they needed to be cleaned and disinfected. Jenny took a few deep breaths to calm herself before she ran to the kitchen to grab some cloths, a bowl of water, and the bottle of strong whisky that Vastra kept in one of the low cupboards. She then hurried back to Vastra with her improvised medical kit and, sitting on the floor next to her, she set to work. 

Sweating in the heat emanating from the fireplace, Jenny cleaned off as much of the blood as she could, which also allowed her to take a closer look at the wounds themselves. Apart from a couple of the deeper cuts that were still bleeding somewhat, she was relieved to discover that most of the blood was dry by now, and that the cuts were generally not as bad as Jenny had thought at first, despite all the blood. When she began the tedious task of removing the glass shreds that were still lodged inside some of the wounds, taking care not to miss even the smaller fragments, Jenny realised that Vastra’s weakened and disoriented state was probably due, less to the injury itself like she had first thought, but more to the cold. Taking a glance at the blazing fire that was causing droplets of sweat to run down her own brow, Jenny placed her fingers on Vastra’s neck to feel both her pulse and her body temperature. Vastra remained unconscious but her pulse was stable, and her skin felt a few degrees warmer than it had been before. Jenny was still worried, but the knot of anxiety that had been sitting in her stomach begun to loosen a little.

It took Jenny a full hour to thoroughly clean all of Vastra’s wounds and, as she felt herself relax more and was no longer distracted by panic, she realised that this was the first time she had seen let alone touched Vastra’s bare skin like this. Apart from unveiling her face and hands at home, Vastra always wore clothing that covered her skin completely. For the first time, Jenny allowed herself to properly look at the muscular outline of Vastra’s arm and the twirling patterns that her scales made as they coiled over her bicep. She noticed that the scales on the outside of the arm were thicker and the cuts there much shallower, while the scales on Vastra’s inner arm were smaller and looked softer, like they were weaved in satin. Jenny became momentarily enthralled by these smaller scales and she found herself unable to resist the temptation to touch them. Her fingers, on their own accord, brushed first against the cool, satiny texture on Vastra’s wrist, and then ran up across her inner arm all the way to her shoulder where the scales turned larger and more rigid, like soft armour. Jenny could see that the glass shreds had failed to puncture through these rigid scales, leaving nothing but scratches behind. She was so mesmerised by intricate way in which the scales transitioned from one type to another that she did not notice that Vastra had begun to come about, until she heard her speak. 

“Thank you, Jenny.”

Jenny pulled her fingers away as if she had been burned and jerked her head up to look at Vastra’s face. There was a kind smile edged across her features, though her words still came out sounding drowsy. “I am sorry for the state in which I arrived home. It seems that you have not only managed to warm me up but also to clean the cuts I procured on my arm. Thank you for that.”

“They still need to be disinfected ma’am. I was goin’ ta use the whisky to do that, but I’m afraid it will sting quite a bit,” Jenny answered, feeling herself blush both from the thank you and from the embarrassment of being caught staring. 

Vastra glanced at the bottle Jenny had brought from the kitchen and shakily reached to grab it with her uninjured hand. She had some difficulty lifting it up and Jenny went to help but before she had the time to do so, Vastra swiftly and without a word titled the bottle over her injured arm. She let the liquid pour across the entire length of it, drenching her skin completely, before dropping the bottle on the floor. Her face twitched as she did so, but she made no sound of discomfort, all the while Jenny stared with wide eyes, imagining how much it must have hurt to feel the alcohol seeping into the wounds. “The percentage of alcohol in this beverage is not quite high enough to be ideal for this purpose, but it will do,” Vastra said through slightly clenched teeth, “but it is only scratches. I will heal quickly once I get properly warm.” 

Jenny took the bottle and placed it away from Vastra’s reach as if she was afraid Vastra might try do it again. “You said yer blood is cold… Is it gettin’ warmer now?” Jenny asked, concerned by the ongoing drowsiness in Vastra’s speech that made it come out slightly slurred, but Vastra just gave out a weak chuckle at her words. “I am warmer now, yes, thanks to you,” she said, smiling at Jenny, and looking genuine grateful. “I am cold blooded, but that does not mean that my blood is actually cold, Jenny. My people are ectotherms, which means that I cannot produce my own body heat like apes and other mammals can. Instead, my body uses external sources to regulate its internal temperature. I require external heat sources to get warm, such as this fire here,” Vastra said, tilting her head towards the fireplace. 

Jenny had no idea what ‘ectotherm’ meant but she understood the rest of it, and went to put some more logs in the fire, just in case, even though she herself was already sweating buckets. “Forgive me if I’m oversteppin’ by askin’ ma’am, but wha’ happened to yer arm? There were shreds of glass piercin’ through ya,” Jenny noted, eyeing Vastra’s arm wearily as the alcohol began to dry, the shine from the liquid dissipating slowly. “It is quite all right. I think that after patching me up, you deserve to know how it was that I came to be in a state that required patching up in the first place.” Vastra looked at Jenny with a soft albeit tired smile, and Jenny felt a little disoriented herself when she gazed back into Vastra’s blue eyes. 

“I was out tonight chasing a man who has committed a murder. I have been following him for some time, and I knew where he would be tonight,” Vastra explained, speaking slower than usual, her voice continuing to slur somewhat. “I intended to capture him to bring him to justice, but the temperature dropped lower tonight than I anticipated. The cold makes me weak, Jenny, it dulls my sense. It makes my reflexes slow and my movements laboured. I should have aborted my pursuit when I realised how cold it was outside, but I was too caught up in the chase. I attempted to apprehend him, but I was not my usual self, and he overpowered me. He had a gun with which he tried to shoot me, but I managed to redirect his hand, and the bullet hit a streetlight instead. The gas lamp exploded, and the glass blasted down on me whilst he escaped. I used my arm to shield myself as the glass shattered, hence the cuts. It took me over an hour to walk home in the cold, which is why I arrived in the state in which you found me.” 

Jenny considered this information for a moment while Vastra’s eyes begun to drift closed again. “Is tha’ what you do all day and night then, catch murderers?” 

Vastra responded with a low hum. “I am a consultant detective for Scotland Yard. My job is to capture London’s most dangerous and elusive criminals.”

“Is that wha’ you were doing the night when we first met, when those men attacked me, and you stopped ‘em?” Jenny dared to ask, despite realising that Vastra clearly needed to get some rest. 

“Yes,” Vastra muttered, speaking with her eyes closed now, “the men who attacked you were members of the Tongs gang, which had committed several violent assaults and murders. I had been instructed by Scotland Yard to remove them off the streets, but I was not certain where to find them. That night, the Doctor paid me a visit, and instructed me to come to that very alleyway where I found you.” 

Vastra was on the verge of falling asleep but there was one more question that Jenny needed to ask. “Did ya kill them? Those men who attacked me.” 

Just before sleep overtook her, Vastra whispered, “yes.”

Jenny stayed with Vastra on the rug in front of the drawing room fireplace all night while her mistress slept off the cold in her body. As Jenny watched her sleep, unable to look away as if she had been hypnotised by the way in which the light from the fire pranced across her face, she wondered what would have happened to her if Vastra had not been there to save her, not just from those men but from the streets in general. She wondered how the strange woman called the Doctor had known where to send Vastra that night, and whether there could be such a thing as faith in the world.


	5. Chapter five

Jenny could not remember falling asleep, but the fact that she woke up attested to the fact that she must have. When she slowly opened her eyes, she realised that she was laying down on the drawing room floor on her back, and a bright morning sun was shining through the cracks of the heavy curtains that were drawn over the windows, causing streaks of light to run across the room. Glancing at the grandfather clock on the wall, she saw that it was half past eight in the morning, three hours past the time when she would have usually woken up to begin her working day. Were it any other morning, she would have cursed herself for oversleeping like this but right now, she was more concerned about the reason for why she had ended up sleeping on the drawing room floor in the first place. 

Turning her head to the side, her eyes found the sleeping figure of Vastra lying next to her on the rug and Jenny felt like her heart skipped a beat when she saw her. One of the streaks of light that ran across the room was shining on her face, making the scales on her crests flicker like jewels under the morning sun. Vastra’s natural green colour had returned to her skin and it looked like she was adorned with a perfectly fitted crown made entirely of emeralds, like a majestic slumbering queen. 

Jenny turned to her side and slowly reached her hand to Vastra’s forehead to check her body temperature, hesitating for a second before she dared to touch. She smiled as she felt that Vastra’s scales were almost as warm as Jenny’s own skin now, testament to the fire that had been burning all night. Jenny knew that once she established that Vastra was warm enough, she should have pulled her hand away, but instead, she watched as her fingers, of their own volition, lightly traced a path from Vastra’s forehead to the central crest on the top of her head. She gasped in awe when she realised that the scales there felt unlike anything she had touched before. It was almost like she was running her fingers against a melting sheet of metal but without being burned. When her fingers travelled along the crest in a gentle caress, a low humming sound emanated from Vastra’s throat. The sound startled Jenny and she unintentionally grazed her fingers harder against the scales on Vastra’s crest, which had the effect of turning the low hum into a soft moan of pleasure and Vastra’s body shuddered a little, before she slowly opened her eyes. 

A part of Jenny’s brain recognised that Vastra’s moan was the most wonderful sound that she could ever remember hearing, but this thought was swiftly replaced by alarm as the expression on Vastra’s face turned from sleepy blissfulness to surprise to obvious unease in a matter of seconds. When it reached the state of unease, Vastra jerked her head away from Jenny’s fingers and sat upright so quickly that it made Jenny’s head spin a little. “Ma’am, I… I’m sorry, I was just checkin’ yer temperature, and I…” Jenny started as she propped herself up onto her knees, but the shocked look on Vastra’s face made her momentarily freeze on the spot. Vastra quickly pressed her own hands on top of the crest where Jenny’s fingers had been only seconds before as if to hide it from view, before she shook her head, like she was trying to clear her thoughts. “Jenny, what… why did you touch my… you should not touch me like that, or I might… Jenny, you really should not touch my crests,” Vastra said, uncharacteristically inarticulate. 

While Jenny understood that stroking her employer’s head in the way that she had done may not have been entirely appropriate, the way in which Vastra was reacting to the relatively innocent gesture made it seem like Jenny had done something much more serious than it seemed, and she did not understand why Vastra would be upset by this as much as she seemed to be. “I’m so sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean ta upset you,” Jenny offered, her initial alarm increasing when she realised that Vastra looked almost ashamed. “Please, forgive me ma’am!” 

“Jenny, my crests… my crests are sensitive,” Vastra said, her voice coming out slightly raspy and harsher than usual. She averted Jenny’s eyes and the embarrassment on her face seemed to deepen further. Her cheeks turned a darker shade of green as if she was blushing, but her voice was steadier when she explained, “I see that you would not have known this but touching one’s crests is… an intimate act which one reserves only to those with whom one… well, with whom one is intimate.” 

It took Jenny a couple of second to understand what Vastra was insinuating, but when the realisation hit, her alarm turned to panic. “Oh no,” Jenny whispered with a high pitch before her hands flew to cover her mouth and she felt blood rushing to her head, making her cheeks redden and her heart beat so loud she though Vastra would hear it. Suddenly, her mind was bombarded with memories, of rejection, of being thrown out by her father, and then left by Annie, and her ears rang with their words… Yer from ta devil, child! I wish you had died instead of them! It’s wrong, it’s sick! You make me sick Jenny!

Jenny felt tears breaking through and she could not stop them from rolling onto her cheeks as a strong wave of terror washed over her body, making her shake when she thought she understood the gravity of her error, how much it must now cost her, again. She had touched Vastra, she had wanted to and still wanted to touch Vastra like only a man should, and Vastra would surely see that now and be sickened by her, even though Jenny had vouched to herself to never again let anyone see what she truly wanted. She would throw her out, Jenny was sure she would, like her father had, back onto the streets. 

“No, please ma’am!” Jenny cried out as her body dropped to the floor in front of Vastra, to beg. “Please don’t throw me out! I’m so sorry, I will repent! Please, I know it’s wrong, I know I’m sick, but please don’t throw me back onto the streets!” 

Jenny squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could, refusing to see the expression of disgust and outrage that was surely edged across Vastra’s beautiful face. It would break her heart. Her muscles tensed in fear as she waited to feel Vastra’s strong hands grab her roughly and drag her out of the house. Several seconds passed in silence as Jenny waited, trembling, but there were no rough hands. Instead, Jenny felt soft scaled fingers lightly graze her chin, before they tilted her head up gently and Jenny dared to slowly open her eyes to look at Vastra. What she saw was not disgust or outrage. Instead, piercing blue eyes stared down into her own looking utterly perplexed. 

“Why on Earth would I throw you out Jenny? And what do you mean you are sick, are you feeling unwell,” Vastra considered, holding Jenny’s chin up while her eyes were scanning Jenny’s face as if she might find for some trace of sickness there. “You seem perfectly healthy to me. Whatever are you talking about?” 

Jenny just stared back at her, still terrified and trembling. “I… touched you like only a man should… I know it’s wrong, I know I’m sick for touching women like that,” she said quietly, her voice shaky from both fear and shame, “but I didn’t know! I swear! I didn’t know yer crests are… I didn’t know it was intimate, I’m sorry, please…” 

Jenny’s eyes were pleading and she was scared, but she was also getting a little confused as to why there was still no anger or revulsion on Vastra’s face. She had seemed so upset before when Jenny had touched her crests but now, Vastra eyes were gazing deep into Jenny’s own with compassion more than anything else. Something flashed across her face as she gazed into Jenny, like a realisation. 

“I have learned that in this time and place, in this society of apes, love and desire between members of the same sex is forbidden… I have heard it said that it is forbidden by the deity that you worship,” Vastra said slowly, searching Jenny’s eyes, “and I have learned that women who love and desire other women are forced to hide their true desire as if it was shameful, or else face the asylum or imprisonment as if they were sick, mad, or criminals.” Jenny felt her muscles tense at the mention of the asylum and prison, and the thought that Vastra might lock her up instead of kicking her out made her want to run, but the tone of Vastra’s voice gave her pause. Vastra sounded, not threatening or judgmental but, rather, sad. “Is that why you were alone when I first found you Jenny? Did someone throw you out onto the streets because you desire other women?”

Jenny’s instincts still told her to run but something about the way in which Vastra was looking at her made the tension in her muscles ease instead, and she just nodded. 

Vastra paused for a moment, and then declared, simply, “I hate apes.”

Jenny was taken aback by this sudden remark, and it must have shown on her face because Vastra huffed and rolled her eyes, before she elaborated, “it is not ‘sick,’ Jenny, and it is not wrong or mad for a woman to desire another. That apes should consider it to be so is testament to the primitive state of your society, nothing more. Only the most irrational of justice systems would punish desire between members of the same sex while allowing those guilty of murder walk free due simply to high social status. Only a brainless physician would consider love between women a sickness while failing to even comprehend the basic principles of women’s sexual physiology, and only the most primitive of species would hold in reverence an imaginary divinity that is said to forbid love but allow torture.” 

Jenny’s eyebrows rose so high due to astonishment that it looked like they might soon merge with her hairline. Indeed, she was so surprised that she barely noticed the derogatory way in which Vastra was referring to her own species. “You… you’re not angry… you’re not sickened by me?” Jenny asked, in disbelief. The corners of Vastra’s mouth tugged into a smile as she looked at Jenny, and her voice was softer when she answered, “no, Jenny. Love and desire between women is beautiful to me.” 

Jenny’s fear begun to dissolve, and she felt the dread that had nested in her chest relax its hold on her. It was certainly the first time she had ever heard anyone use that word to describe how she felt about women and, she realised, there was a small voice at the back of her head that could not help but agree. It was beautiful. Then, a question rouse in her mind and she felt like she needed to know. 

“You told me tha’ your people had a great civilization before you went to sleep under the Earth. Did yer people allow women to love each other?” 

“Yes…” Vastra answered, and her eyes glazed over for a moment and she paused, like lost in a memory. “Love was… sacred, in all its forms, and desire was cherished wherever it was reciprocated. Jenny, I am sorry if I frightened you by the way I reacted when you touched my crests. You could not have known but it is, as I said, an intimate act… The last time my crests were touched by another was before the Great Sleep, and I was reminded… of my people.” 

There was melancholy in her voice, and Jenny suddenly understood fully for the first time that Vastra must have lost, not just her people in general but, moreover, every individual she would have cared about. Jenny also felt immensely curious though and could not stop herself from asking questions – this was the first time Vastra had opened up to her like this, telling her about her people. 

“Ma’am, please forgive me if I’m oversteppin’ but may I ask… how it is that you’re the only one who’s awake. You’ve said you were woken up against yer will when the London underground extension was dug up, but ‘ow? Why didn’t ya just go back ta sleep to be with yer people?”

There was a flash of anger in Vastra’s eyes and Jenny immediately regretted asking such a bold question, but the flash quickly diminished and was replaced with sadness again. “I cannot go back to sleep, even if I wished to. The sleep that my people are under is not sleep like you know it but rather suspended animation with the aid of a chamber that uses technology similar to that which your people will one day call cryonics. It means that my people are artificially kept suspended yet alive inside a cocoon of sorts which preserves our bodies indefinitely. Once the cocoon is unsealed, we awaken exactly as we were when we were placed inside the cocoon, but my cocoon was damaged beyond repair.” Vastra signed deeply before she continued.

“Before the Great Sleep, I was a military commander for my… tribe. I suppose ‘tribe’ would be the most accurate word in your language to describe our social groupings. Twenty of our most trained soldiers, including myself and nineteen sisters in arms, were placed in our cocoons in a separate cavity on much shallower ground than the rest of the tribe, with the civilians slumbering in a larger cavity deep below us, so that we would be the first line of defence if something was to threaten the others beneath. When the London underground extension was constructed, the drills penetrated the cavity inside of which me and my sisters slumbered. It punctured the life support systems that kept us animated. For a reason I have not been able to discern, my cocoon unsealed itself as it malfunctioned while the rest of my sisters suffocated inside theirs. As the lone survivor, I emerged from beneath the ground to find my world utterly changed and overrun by ape vermin who had slaughtered my sisters in their sleep. I sought revenge for their deaths and killed as many of the construction workers as I could, but the Doctor found me before I could kill them all. She convinced me to cease my attack, and for that, I owe her my life. Had I continued in blind rage, the apes would have eventually overpowered and killed me despite my superior combat abilities as there are so many of you and only one of me.” 

When Vastra finished her story and Jenny saw the pained expression on her face, she found herself feeling both honoured that Vastra had trusted her with this information and angry as well as sad that Vastra had lost so much. While Jenny could not imagine what it would be like to awaken to a world entirely different from the one she knew, Jenny did know all too well what it felt like to lose the people she loved, to lose her family, and she hated the idea that Vastra had felt pain like that. All she wanted for Vastra was happiness. She just wanted Vastra to feel pleasure that would make her moan like she had when Jenny touched her crests. 

“Ma’am, the person who last touched yer crests, before the great sleep… did you love him?” Jenny asked, and then realised how personal her question was. “I’m sorry ma’am, it’s none of me business.” 

Vastra just smiled. “The person who last touched my crests is gone now, but yes, I did love her. She was one of the sisters who perished when I was awoken. I loved all of my sisters, but her most of all.” Vastra paused for a moment, lost in thought. Then, she said, in a different tone that was no longer melancholy like it had been before, but had, rather, almost a teasing quality to it, “I will have you know, though, that no man ever has, and no man ever will touch my crests, unless he wishes to die a painful death.”


	6. Chapter six

After that one weekend in March, when Vastra came home cold and injured and Jenny patched her up, and the two women told each other things that were private and tender, there was a change in the atmosphere on 13 Paternoster Row. It was not something that they discussed in words or addressed in any kind of explicit way but rather, the air around them shifted, like wind changing direction and bringing with it warmer weathers. Vastra still spent most of her days working in her office and Jenny spent most of hers working around the house. Their interactions during the day were still brief and polite. The evenings, however, were different now. Sometimes, Vastra would go on her nightly escapades just as she had before, but now, she would tell Jenny beforehand where she was headed and when to expect her home. Most evenings, though, after Jenny had finished her work for the day and Vastra emerged from her office, the two women would sit together, talking and drinking tea by the fire in the sitting room, or on the high wicker chairs in the greenhouse when Jenny could bear the heat and humidity. 

Their conversations were, at first, polite and ordinary as they got used to spending time in each other’s company. Vastra would ask Jenny questions about her work around the house, and Jenny would tell her about the things that she had done that day and the things that she was planning to do in the near future, such as weeding the garden and trimming the overgrown hedges come summertime. Once they exhausted the conversation that could be made out of the mundane aspects of Jenny’s work, Vastra would settle down with a book and Jenny would take out needle and thread to mend their clothing, which mostly entailed repairing the rips and tears that Vastra tended to accumulate on her garments during her nights out.

Then, after a few weeks of evenings like this, Jenny gained enough courage to begin asking Vastra questions about her work, in turn. The first time she did this, Vastra paused for a long while before answering, and even when she did answer, she only disclosed the bare minimum of detail involved in the case that she was working on. Jenny was not dissuaded however, but rather encouraged that Vastra had shared anything at all, so she kept asking Vastra questions about the content of her day, never pressing for information but only subtly coaxing. Slowly, Vastra begun to share more with Jenny and after a while, she seemed to even enjoy doing so, like she was glad to finally have someone to talk to about her cases. Jenny listened intently and found herself fascinated as well as rather elated as Vastra relayed to her the many twists and turns that were often involved in her investigative work. Sometimes, Jenny could barely contain her excitement when Vastra was telling her about an arrest she had made, and Vastra would laugh and smile with her eyes as well as her mouth when Jenny exclaimed impatiently, “then wha’ happened, what did you do next, ma’am?” 

By the time that summer finally came, and Jenny begun her work to fix up the garden, conversation between the two women came naturally and flowed freely in the way that it would between good friends. Apart from the fact that Vastra rarely spoke about the time before the Great Sleep and Jenny rarely asked because she hated to see the sadness that settled on Vastra’s face when she remembered it, Jenny and Vastra spent their evenings discussing all manner of things now, from politics and current events to philosophy and religion. When they conversed like this, Jenny sometimes forgot her position as a servant and related to Vastra more like she was a member of her family than her employer. Jenny did not always understand the complicated words and abstruse turns of phrase that Vastra would use, but she generally got the gist of her meaning, and was not afraid to express her own opinion, even when she disagreed with Vastra. While Jenny knew that most maids would never be allowed to speak up to their lady in the way that she did with Vastra when the two of them were engaged in a debate, Vastra never reprimanded Jenny for this and seemed, actually, to almost enjoy it when Jenny dared to challenge her intellectually. There was a spark in her eye and the tone of her voice became animated when Jenny provoked her into what were sometimes rather heated arguments about the nature of reality. 

One such argument concerned the existence of the Christian god that Jenny had grown up believing in. Even if she herself had never had a particularly close relationship with this god nor even liked him that much, to be honest, she nonetheless found it rather shocking and blasphemous that Vastra considered him nothing more than ‘an illogical ape superstition.’ When Jenny attempted to defend her religion, Vastra huffed and remarked, “this god of yours is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, but answer me this, Jenny, if your god is real, then why is there so much suffering and pain in this society of apes? If the god of apes possesses unlimited goodness then surely, he wants only good things to befall his disciples, and if he is all powerful and all knowing, then surely, he has the knowledge and capacity required to make it so that only good things come to pass. If your god is real, why is it that there seems to be more evilness than goodness in this society?”

As Vastra finished, Jenny opened her mouth to respond but then paused and slowly closed it again when she realised that she actually had no comeback to this. She considered Vastra’s words for a moment, and she was forced to concede to herself that she could not answer Vastra’s questions. She sighed and was about to admit this when she looked up at Vastra and felt a rush of annoyance when she saw that Vastra was looking all too smug and pleased with herself for Jenny’s liking. Instead of owning up to the fact that she had lost the argument, she retorted, “well if our god is so illogical, ‘ow is your goddess so much better? Isn’t she supposed ta be good and powerful and wise as well, so ‘ow come she let so many terrible things ‘appen to ya?” 

Vastra’s smile faded and she averted Jenny’s eyes, and Jenny immediately wished that she had held her tongue because the pain in Vastra’s eyes made her heart break a little. “I refer to the goddess more out of habit now than anything else for I have no access to her here. Although she is revered, our goddess is not a supernatural being in the same way as your Christian god is, and in fact, she is not a deity at all in the way that you think of it, but rather, an artificial intelligence of sorts that holds the knowledge of generations of my people. Silurians are able to form psychic links with each other. Using this ability, we could also to retrieve knowledge from the minds of individuals at the moment of their death and upload this knowledge into a digital database… it was like a large bank that holds, not wealth, but memories. Any individual could access this bank via a psychic interface, by linking their minds to it, and the bank would then retrieve and relay the information that the individual needed from past generations. We called this bank the goddess. While she was generally good, powerful and wise, her goodness, power and wisdom were not unlimited. She was only as good as the memories of the people that she held within her, and she certainly had no control over the things that have happened to me since I was awoken from the Great Sleep.” 

Vastra paused for a moment, before she reflected, in a melancholy tone, “the goddess was, I believe, the greatest technological achievement of my people. She was revered because she gave us easy access to all the knowledge that had been held by Silurians over thousands of years.” Jenny had to fight the urge to run to Vastra and hold her, to comfort her. She wanted to embrace her, and stroke her head to drive the sadness away and make her moan with pleasure instead, but all she could do was watch as Vastra became lost in a memory. 

In addition to politics, current events, philosophy and religion, there were a few nights when Jenny and Vastra discussed matters of science and, especially, biology. Even more specifically, they discussed the biological differences between their respective species. Jenny had received very little education. Indeed, her schooling was limited to the infrequent reading and writing lessons she had received from the lodger who co-habited with her family when she was a child. So, Jenny mostly just listened attentively and asked questions while Vastra taught her new things about Silurian as well as human physiology. 

One night in late June, Jenny gathered the courage to ask Vastra about her tongue. In truth, Jenny had been fascinated by Vastra’s tongue since the very first time she saw it all those months ago and she had been curious to learn more ever since, but there was something about this strange and elusive organ that gave Jenny pause. Whenever she saw the dexterous pink flesh flicker in the air, Jenny felt her heart begin to beat more rapidly and blood rushed to her face, reddening her cheeks. 

“Ma’am, would you tell me about yer tongue,” Jenny asked, turning her face downward in a rather feeble attempt to hide her blush, “it’s so different from mine.”

Vastra smiled. It was mostly a gentle of smile but there was a brief glimmer in her eyes that looked almost flirtatious. “What, more precisely, would you like to know, Jenny?” 

Jenny blushed even further and felt a small tingle somewhere below her bellybutton. “Well,” she started, her voice coming out higher pitched than she had intended, “you seem to use it not just fer tastin’ things… Wha’ kinds of things can ya do with it?” 

Vastra chuckled softly and shifted in her chair, leaning forward towards Jenny a little. “I can do a great variety of things with it… first of all, I use it to smell as well as taste things,” Vastra said, before flickering her tongue briefly in the air, quite like a snake would, in the way that Jenny had seen her do many times before. Jenny swallowed. “But my tongue is also a weapon,” Vastra elaborated, before she darted her tongue out of her mouth like a whip. Jenny watched in stunned silence as the forked tip flew across the room in a quick flash, extending what Jenny estimated to be at least five feet. “There are glands that produce venom at the tip of my tongue which is strong enough to kill even the largest of adult male apes, if I so wish. But do not be frightened, Jenny,” Vastra added quickly, as she saw the alarmed expression that crossed Jenny’s face at the mention of venom, “the secretion of the venom is entirely under my control. I am only venomous if I choose to be, and I will certainly not use my venom against you.” Jenny relaxed at her reassurance, and Vastra smiled. “In addition, my tongue is quite like a limb, a third arm of sorts that I can use to grab things that are out of arm’s reach, or…” Vastra paused for a short moment, as if contemplating how to phrase her next words. There was that flirtatious glimmer in her eye again. “I can use my tongue to touch in a different way than one might with a hand, for example… to bring pleasure to another.”

An image flashed in Jenny’s mind then, of Vastra’s tongue, flickering, as it often did when Vastra was tasting the air, except in Jenny’s mind’s eye, it was not the air that Vastra was tasting. Suddenly, she understood why it was that the sight of Vastra’s tongue always made her blush, and before she could stop herself, Jenny imagined what it would feel like to have that forked tip on her body, in her body… 

“Jenny, are you all right? Perhaps I have given you too much information,” Vastra asked, with a hint of genuine concern in her voice but the flirtatious glimmer was still there too. As Jenny was abruptly brought out of her disgraceful musings, she realised that her breathing had turned rather rapid and shallow, and she was squeezing her hands together in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. 

“Oh, no ma’am, I’m fine,” Jenny said quickly, feeling somewhat out of breath, “thank you fer tellin’ me, it’s very… educational.” 

“Well, I am very glad to hear that,” Vastra quipped, and the playful tone in her voice did not at all help with the tingle below Jenny’s navel.


	7. Chapter seven

As the summer went on and July turned to June, the relationship between Jenny and Vastra grew closer still and Jenny found it increasingly difficult to ignore the pull that she felt towards Vastra. She had developed and odd habit of getting distracted whenever Vastra was near, which sometimes impeded their evening conversations. Jenny would get lost in her thoughts while Vastra was talking to her, and she would listen to Vastra’s voice without hearing the words as the lovely sound carried her to imagine improper things, like a seductive melody. Vastra noticed this, and while she would huff and tell Jenny off for not paying attention, the talking-to sounded feigned somehow, as if she did not really mean it, and there was almost a teasing quality to her tone. Indeed, Jenny could not help but notice that often, during their evenings together, this teasing quality would seep into Vastra’s words more generally, and sometimes, the things she said had a tone of suggestion too or she would say things that could be interpreted in more ways than one.

Increasingly, Jenny also caught Vastra stealing glances of her, or, more accurately, glances of particular parts of her body when she thought Jenny was not looking. It was not just when Jenny brought Vastra her tea in the office and leaned over to set it down on the low table by her desk, although it was definitely that too. It was also, sometimes, when they were talking in the evening, especially if they were spending time in the greenhouse, when Jenny would get too warm and she would unbutton the high collar of her maid uniform to feel more comfortable. She would notice how Vastra’s eyes strayed from her face to the bared skin on her neck and then to her chest, and in these moments, Jenny wondered, hoped even, that maybe, Vastra felt a pull towards her, too, and maybe, just maybe, her desire was reciprocated. 

During the day, when Vastra was working in her office, Jenny found herself spending increasing amounts of time working on the garden outside, weeding, cutting the hedges and grass, and preparing the soil for proper plants to grow. At first, she thought she was doing this because she wanted Vastra to be able to enjoy beautiful plant life outside as well as in her beloved greenhouse, but as she was crouched over the ground, pulling out broadleaf weeds and sweeting like a fountain, she realised that the physical effort involved was helping her blow off some steam more than anything else. For months now, the parts of Jenny’s mind that she had less control over had worked overtime to bombard her with a range of images, all involving Vastra and herself in various compromising positions. Whenever her mind was overridden with these images, which was most of the time, dampness gathered between her legs and she found herself getting frustrated. Without a proper outlet to alleviate the frustration during the day, Jenny engrossed herself in physically demanding tasks to distract from the relentless yearning she felt. 

At night, though, after both her and Vastra had retired to their respective bedrooms, Jenny closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wonder where it wanted to go. In the cover of darkness and in the privacy of her own room – a privilege she appreciated now more than ever – Jenny let her fingers run across her own folds, imagining that they were Vastra’s fingers. Trembling and gasping for air, she brought herself some relief from the unsatisfied desires that had begun to haunt her like a poltergeist. Sometimes, just as she was falling asleep, she wondered whether Vastra ever did the same. With this as her last conscious thought, she was swept under delicious dreams of Vastra crying out into the night in pure pleasure. 

By August, Jenny’s feelings for Vastra had grown to nearly intolerable levels, and it was all she could do to keep from throwing herself at her. Increasingly, she had begun to think about actually telling Vastra how she felt, because she knew she could not hold it in for much longer – she was beginning to feel like she would soon suffocate. Jenny was also beginning to suspect with more confidence that Vastra felt at least something for her, too. Even if not of the magnitude with which Jenny was attracted to Vastra, there was at least some kind of pull that Vastra seemed to feel towards her, for Vastra’s flirtatious tone and lingering gazes were more overt now. Indeed, sometimes it was like Vastra was not even trying to hide the way in which she was gazing at Jenny’s backside whenever it was in her line of view. At least, if Jenny came out with it and confessed how she felt, she would get some resolution, whether it was reciprocation or rejection. If nothing else, the latter would give some closure, like a bucket of cold water over her head. The former on the other hand, well… there mere thought of it made Jenny’s her heart beat faster and her breathing grow rapid. 

Then, one evening in early August, an opportunity presented itself, although it did not go quite like Jenny might have planned it if she had gotten as far as to formulate a plan. It started when they were discussing the human convention of marriage – which was utterly alien to Vastra – after Vastra had arrested a woman charged with murdering her own husband. It turned out that he had been violent towards her for years and, unable to stand it anymore and unable to divorce him, she had poisoned him, thinking this to be her only means of escaping the violent relationship. Vastra struggled with this information, considering that she had been the one to bring this woman to Scotland Yard to be punished for her crime, yet she felt that the true criminal in this case had been the husband whose violence had compelled her to take such drastic action in the first place. 

“Apes have such primitive rules about interpersonal relationships,” Vastra exclaimed to Jenny, sighing audibly and throwing her arms in the air as if to express surrender in the face of it all, “and the institution of marriage is the most primitive of all. No civilized species would endorse a system of rules around sexual relations which is predicated upon one party being superior and the other inferior merely due to the set of genitals they have between their legs. Apes seem to consider marriage as the only proper context for romantic unions, yet they allow a husband to do whatever he may wish to his wife as if she was nothing more than his property. He may beat her, rape her, and take away her independence so that she cannot leave him, yet if she takes action to resist this injustice, it is her who is punished and not him.” 

Jenny’s brow furrowed as she listened to Vastra’s rant because, quite besides the insensitive yet predictable remarks about ‘primitive apes,’ Jenny was not at all convinced that Vastra had correctly understood the meaning of marriage. “But ma’am, marriage is about love,” Jenny said, her voice genuine and sincere, “that’s what it’s really about, at the heart of it all, it’s about love, and it’s about bein’ equal in love. I mean, yeah, the woman who killed ‘er husband didn’t have a good marriage, that’s for sure, but tha’ doesn’t mean that’s what marriage is always like, or wha’ it should be like. What its really about is two people lovin’ each other so much tha’ they can’t live without each other, and they want ta be together for as long as they live. So, they make vows ta be together and be good to each other. It’s like the vow says, marriage is to have and hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and cherish, till death us do part.” 

Vastra looked at Jenny, her blue eyes running over Jenny’s face questioningly, like she was considering her in a new way. She paused for a moment, before she noted, “you forgot the part where the bride says, ‘and to obey,’ till death do us part… But I do admit that they picture you paint of what marriage should be is much more pleasing than how I have come to understand it.” 

There was a couple of seconds of silence between them during which Vastra continued to scan Jenny’s face while Jenny blushed. Feeling Vastra’s eyes upon her always made Jenny nervous in one way or another nowadays, but this stare was different, curious but also apprehensive, like Vastra was entertaining an unpleasant thought. 

“Do you want to get married, Jenny?” Vastra asked, quite bluntly, and Jenny was visibly taken aback. Jenny felt her cheeks flush even redder as, for a split second, before her brain caught up with her heart, she thought that Vastra was proposing to her, but then, she immediately realised how stupid of a thought that was. Of course, Vastra was asking whether Jenny wanted to get married in general, not whether Jenny wanted to get married to her in particular. Jenny felt her shoulders sink as she noted quietly, “ma’am, I can’t get married, at least not to anyone I’d want to marry. Women can’t get married to each other.” 

Vastra hummed and gave Jenny a tentative smile as she said, “perhaps not in a church or in front of the law, but you just said that marriage is really about love, rather than about the church or the law. You said that it is about two people, equal in love, vowing to be together and to be good to each other. I see no reason why two women could not make those vows.”

Jenny thought about this point, only for a second, before she quickly concluded that Vastra was right. It made her smile, as she agreed, “yeah, ma’am, I suppose that’s true.” Vastra smiled back at her, but the smile did not touch her eyes like it usually did when she smiled at Jenny. “Well then, do you want to get married?” She asked again.

Jenny needed to consider this for a longer while. She had accepted years ago that she would never get married, for she certainly did not want to marry a man, but then again, if marriage really was about love, and Jenny was quite sure that it was or at least that it should be just about love, then there truly was no reason why she could not marry a woman. Even if this marriage would not be recognised by the church or the law, why should that stop her? “I suppose…” Jenny started, speaking slowly as she reflected on the idea, “I suppose I do, actually. Yeah, I think I do want to get married, one day.” 

Vastra seemed to hesitate for a moment, her eyes searching Jenny’s face cautiously, almost wearily, before she said, “Jenny, I now realise that I may have been unfair to you, for you spend so much of your time here with me that you have very little time for yourself. Perhaps you wish to spend more time with your own people, to find someone… someone who you wish to have as your companion. If that is so, please consider your evenings and Sundays to be your own time for as much as I enjoy our conversations, you are certainly not obliged to entertain me. I do not wish to be a hindrance to your search for someone you may want to marry someday.”

Vastra words sounded sincere, and her voice was calm and kind as she spoke, but there was still a hint of unease on her face and her muscles tensed, as if she was anticipating a blow. Jenny immediately wanted to reassure her, to make the unease and tension go away, and she opened her mouth to speak but then suddenly felt tongue tied. She averted Vastra’s eyes yet remained very conscious of the fact that they continued to gaze upon her as she waged an internal battle with herself. She knew what she wanted to say, what she needed to say, but whether or not she was brave enough to say it was a different matter altogether. 

“Jenny?”

At the sound of her name, Jenny lifted her eyes to meet Vastra’s, and when she saw the intensity of the blue stare that was fixed on her, observing her guardedly, like Vastra was still waiting for a blow to come, Jenny made up her mind. With a deep intake of breath to prepare herself, Jenny stood up from her chair and walked over to where Vastra was seated. “Ma’am,” she started, looking down at Vastra, for once, “I want to be ‘ere with you. I don’t want anyone… anyone else. I wish to have your company, ma’am I… Wha’ I want is you.”

Vastra’s blue gaze was as intense as ever as she tilted her head to the side slightly, in that funny way that she sometimes did when she was not sure of something. She bit her lip in an unconscious gesture of uncertainty, something Jenny had never seen her do until that moment, before she asked, “Jenny… what do you mean to say? You indicated that you want to get married one day, so, I take it that you must desire… romantic entanglements.”

Jenny could not help the small nervous gasp that escaped from her throat at this, and she looked away. So, Jenny concluded, it seemed that she would need to come out with it full on then. Be explicit. Just say it. “Ma’am…” she exhaled, as she forced herself to look up into Vastra’s eyes again, and immediately felt like she was being immersed in a haze of cerulean blue, “ma’am, I want you. I want ta be close to you. I want to be… intimate, with you, to touch you... I want you.” 

Jenny watched as the uncertainty on Vastra’s face slowly drifted away, and then, it turned into an expression that Jenny had dreamt of seeing on Vastra face, many times, but had never actually witnessed in reality, until now. Vastra’s eyes narrowed and her lips parted slightly as she stood up from her chair and looked down at Jenny with desire printed all over her, and Jenny felt a sudden throb between her legs. Simultaneously feeling immensely relieved, very excited, and unexpectedly daring at seeing her own desire returned in this way, Jenny took a step towards Vastra, now standing so close that she could feel Vastra’s breathing on her skin. 

“But,” Jenny continued quietly, “the things I want to have with you… none of it matters unless you don’t want me too. Do you want me, ma’am?”

Vastra exhaled, in a way that Jenny thought sounded almost like the end of a silent moan. She leaned her head down a little, her eyes swaying across Jenny’s face, moving between her eyes and her lips, but she paused for a long while, hesitating. Jenny waited, struggling with anticipation but relishing the feeling of having Vastra’s body so close to her own. There was an enchanting kind of tension in the air between them.

“Oh Goddess,” Vastra whispered finally, sounding almost desperate, “I do.” 

That was enough for Jenny. She had been yearning, hoping, for so long that she wasted no time closing the small distance that still separated them. She captured Vastra’s cheeks in her hands and pulled her lips down to meet her own. 

Until now, Jenny had thought that she already knew what Vastra’s scaled skin felt like. She had even touched Vastra’s bare skin on some of her more vulnerable places, like the inner side of her wrists and the bend of her elbow. Jenny knew that, apart from the lines of thicker, armoured scales that protected parts of Vastra’s body like a shield, her skin was not rough, like one might expect, but soft and satiny instead. Yet, as their lips touched, Jenny vaguely registered that until this moment, her knowledge of Vastra’s skin had been superficial, at best. 

When Vastra kissed her back, Jenny felt like her lips were being enclosed inside layers of expensive silk. Vastra’s lips were cool, at first, against Jenny’s own warm ones, but they soon responded to the heat emanating from Jenny’s body, warming up to meet her higher body temperature. The kiss begun tentatively, almost hesitantly, but it quickly grew deeper, becoming more passionate as Jenny got increasingly lost in the moment and Vastra seemed to follow. Unable to resist, Jenny ran her tongue softly against Vastra’s upper lip, and was elated when Vastra opened her mouth, gliding her tongue against Jenny’s own. With somewhat of a surprise, Jenny realised that the texture of Vastra’s tongue actually did not feel much different to a human tongue, but that thought was interrupted by her own sigh of pleasure as she felt the forked tip of Vastra’s tongue tickle the smooth rounded edge of her own. Jenny felt Vastra’s fingers run down her sides and back softly, before grasping her hips and pulling her closer. She heard herself whimper into their kiss, and flung her arms around Vastra’s neck, daring to caress the smaller crests that stretched out from her skull there. When she touched them, Vastra gasped, so much so that it broke the kiss. 

“Jenny, I… you… this… are you sure,” Vastra started, sounding more incoherent than Jenny had ever heard her. Her eyes, shrouded in what looked like an odd mixture of lust and concern, were blazing into Jenny’s.

“Yes,” Jenny responded, meeting Vastra’s eyes without trouble. In fact, she felt more confident about this than she had ever felt about anything. As if to prove it, she pulled Vastra down and kissed her hard, pressing their bodies firmly together, even biting down on Vastra’s bottom lip gently. When Vastra responded in equal measure, Jenny pulled their lips apart an inch, only teasingly, but enough to whisper against Vastra’s mouth. “Will you take me to bed?”


	8. Chapter eight

The fire in Vastra’s bedroom was roaring happily, making the room nice and warm as Jenny divested Vastra from the outer layers of her elaborate dress. Jenny took her time, unbuttoning and unlacing slowly. Each time a piece of clothing came loose enough for her to slide it off Vastra’s body, she looked Vastra in the eyes and smiled as she dropped the garment to the floor. Vastra was standing still, allowing Jenny to move around her and undress her as she pleased, and Jenny grew increasingly wet while doing so. By the time she had reached the corset and unlaced it at the back enough to remove it, Jenny was positively soaked. When she raised her somewhat shaky hands with the intention of unbuttoning the front, however, Vastra suddenly grabbed her wrists, stopping their progress. Confused, Jenny looked up, and was worried to see Vastra biting her lip nervously, seeming uncharacteristically shy. 

“What’s wrong,” Jenny whispered, searching Vastra’s eyes. 

“I... I don’t know if you are aware Jenny,” Vastra started, but then paused for a second and took a deep breath before she continued, “my body is somewhat different from yours.”

Jenny felt the corners of her mouth tug into a smile, and she could not help the small giggle that escaped from her throat. “Yeah, I’m aware ma’am,” she said, amused by the seriousness with which Vastra had made her remark. “You’ve got scales, a tongue like a snake, and you’re green, and you’ve got crests instead of hair on ya head. I’m observant, you know. I’ve noticed.” 

Vastra, clearly realising the obvious, smiled back at her, and gave a small chuckle herself before she took one of Jenny’s hands to her lips. “Well, there is that,” she said and kissed the tips of her fingers, “but Jenny, you have not seen me unclothed before. There are differences that you have not seen, and I do not think you know to expect them.” 

Jenny considered this while Vastra looked down at her intently, still clearly nervous. “Then, please, show me,” she said finally, bringing Vastra’s fingers to her own lips now, kissing the soft scales there to reassure Vastra that whatever it was, it would be just fine, more than fine by Jenny. It was Vastra’s body after all.

“I am not certain I believe that you will find me pleasing to behold,” said Vastra quietly, but begun to unbutton the front of her corset, nonetheless. Jenny’s brow furrowed. She was rather taken aback by the comment, considering that she knew that Vastra was very proud of her species – often to an annoying extent. As Vastra reached the last few buttons, Jenny stopped her, taking Vastra’s hands into her own and looking into her eyes. 

“I don’t much care for wha’ you believe about that. I’d rather decide for meself,” Jenny said. 

Taking over from Vastra, she undid the last buttons, and let the corset fall to the floor, leaving the thin chemise Vastra had been wearing underneath her many layers as her only cover against full nudity. Jenny was still looking at her eyes, encouraging, and Vastra gave her a hesitant glance before she reached down to grab the hem and pull off the chemise as well.

Jenny did not register the small rustling sound that the chemise made when it dropped to the floor, and she only distantly realised that Vastra was observing her face carefully as she took in the sight of the naked Silurian before her. Jenny immediately noticed that Vastra did indeed look different than she had expected. The first thing she noticed was that Vastra actually had neither breasts nor nipples, despite the fact that the clothing she wore normally gave out the appearance of a bosom. There must be padding in her corset, Jenny thought in passing. She might even have looked down at the corset on the floor to confirm this theory were she not too transfixed by the flowing shades of green that ran across Vastra’s torso, the scales flickering as they reflected the light from the fireplace. The thicker, more armoured scales on her shoulders that Jenny had seen before spiralled down all the way to her chest where they covered Vastra’s pectoral muscles. The muscles were clearly strong but rounded outwards only slightly, which made them look unexpectedly feminine, Jenny thought, even in the absence of breast tissue. Mesmerised by them, Jenny lifted her fingers to trace the edges, running one finger in between them and then towards the middle of Vastra’s stomach, feeling Vastra shudder a little as she did so. She stopped when she reached the point where Vastra’s navel should have been, as she realised that the navel, too, was missing. Instead, there were satiny soft scales there that faded from emerald green to pare to almost yellow as they swirled down towards her hips, covering a firm set of visible abdominal muscles that looked familiar but tilted more diagonally than human muscles would. Jenny kept her fingers on Vastra’s abdomen but allowed her gaze to drift downwards. She exhaled shakily as she saw how the yellowy scales lower down on Vastra’s stomach curved around her hips and turned the colour of cream just before they disappeared between her legs. Jenny’s own legs felt suddenly weak around the knees. 

Jenny lifted her eyes up slowly, running her fingers along Vastra’s sides in pace with her gaze, loving how Vastra shuddered again. When her eyes were level with Vastra’s chest, she paused to lean forward and kiss her there, lingering a little to feel Vastra’s rapid heartbeat against her lips, before she looked up into her eyes. The cerulean blue was deep like ocean, and Jenny felt her knees grow weaker still. 

“I find you absolutely stunning. Magnificent to behold,” she whispered before capturing Vastra’s lips with her own. Vastra pulled her closer as they kissed, pressing Jenny’s still fully clothed body against her own naked one. Jenny raised her arms to caress the sides of Vastra’s face, running her fingers up to gently stroke her crests. When she reached up and slowly traced the tips of the crests with her fingers, Vastra moaned against her lips and, suddenly, Jenny felt two strong hands grab her waist, almost roughly. She gave out a small involuntary yelp as her whole body was abruptly swung around and her back pressed firmly against the wall. It took Jenny a couple of seconds to reorient herself, but when she did, Vastra’s hands were all over her, grasping at her hips and fumbling with the buttons of her dress. Jenny whimpered and smiled when Vastra groaned in frustration and ripped the front of her dress open at the seams, clearly much less patient with the simple buttons of her maid uniform than Jenny had been with the much more complicated fastenings of Vastra’s dress. Jenny’s outfit had fewer layers, too, but Vastra did not bother with them and simply ripped through the fabric, almost growling at each new layer that unveiled itself as if they were presenting a deplorable delay to her efforts to reach the goal beneath. Jenny inhaled deeply, even if a little shakily, as her corset was torn open, but the exhale came out as a moan when Jenny felt Vastra’s mouth on her neck, biting down lightly. She tilted her head to the side to allow Vastra better access and touched her fingers along Vastra’s crests again as Vastra ripped open her chemise, exposing Jenny’s naked body to the warm night air. 

As Jenny’s tattered chemise fell to the floor, Vastra paused her frenzied actions just for a moment. She kept her hands on Jenny’s hips but leaned back a little, her eyes sliding slowly from Jenny’s breasts to her navel and lower down before making the same journey back. Jenny felt her cheeks redden and her body tensed under the feeling of being so exposed, so open to the blue gaze that was penetrating her body. She shuddered in anticipation.

Looking into Jenny’s eyes with an expression full of want, Vastra reached her fingers to Jenny’s breasts and cupped them gently, her thumbs brushing against the nipples, making them peak and Jenny quiver. “My dear Jenny, you are exquisite,” Vastra whispered breathlessly, before she leaned down to bring her lips to Jenny’s breast. She took Jenny’s nipple into her mouth and sucked, sliding her tongue against it as she did so, while Jenny moaned and threw her head back, her eyes closing as she grasped at Vastra’s crests, making Vastra moan in turn. Jenny realised distantly that her wetness was dripping down her upper thigh by now, and her clit was aching from the need to be touched but Vastra’s mouth on her breast felt wonderful and she arched her back into the touch even while she was finding it difficult to stop herself from pushing Vastra’s head lower. Vastra seemed to register this, and in one swift motion, she grabbed Jenny into her arms and carried her across the room before laying her down at the centre of the grand four poster bed.

Jenny watched with lidded eyes as Vastra straddled her waist, her muscular body looking positively delicious on top of her. She pulled Vastra’s head down to kiss her deeply and arched her chest up to feel Vastra’s cool scales against her own flushed skin, grasping at Vastra’s thighs as they kissed and enjoying the way the firm muscles tensed under her palms. The tip of Vastra’s tongue tickled her upper lip briefly before Vastra broke the kiss to move down over Jenny, tracing a path of kisses first across her collarbone and then, slowly, lower. Vastra’s tongue paused to trace over Jenny’s nipples, making Jenny’s breathing grow louder before it turned into a cascade of soft whimpers.

Jenny was still a little surprised that Vastra’s tongue, despite the forked tip and slightly cooler temperature, did not feel much different from a human tongue as it glided down her body. Although, Jenny had to admit, Vastra had only so far used it on parts of Jenny’s body where its length and dexterity would carry limited benefit for the purposes of inducing pleasure. This thought reached Jenny’s consciousness at the same time as Vastra’s lips reached the soft patch of black curls between her legs, and Jenny groaned, no longer blushing at the sight of Vastra’s tongue but feeling, rather, a rush of excitement at the prospect of having it upon her most sensitive areas. 

Vastra paused for a moment, however, and Jenny looked down to see Vastra’s crowned head looking sinfully beautiful between her spread legs, blue eyes staring back at her with hunger but also a question printed on them. “Please,” Jenny whispered as she placed her hands on Vastra’s head, stroking softly but also pressing her downwards. Vastra signed unsteadily as Jenny’s warm hands found her crests and, at the same moment, she surged her tongue forward in a long stroke that ran from the lower edge of Jenny’s entrance all the way across to the tip of her clit. 

Jenny cried out and her head tilted back on the soft feather pillows, her hands grabbing at Vastra’s crests to pull her face more firmly against her folds. Vastra eagerly complied, pressing her full mouth on Jenny and letting her tongue run against Jenny’s clit, first moving in slow circles around it and then sliding against the hood while capturing and softly rubbing the peak of Jenny’s clit between the two forked tips of her tongue. Jenny quickly became a moaning mess and unconsciously held onto Vastra’s crests with increasing firmness, distantly realising that the more she grasped at the crests, the more Vastra was moaning too, the sound vibrating against Jenny in pleasurable waves. “Oh god, ma’am,” Jenny whimpered shakily as Vastra fluttered her tongue at the tip of Jenny’s clit like the wings of a butterfly, before she pressed down more firmly, running over it in steady strokes. Jenny was really close already, struggling to hold at bay the orgasm that was threatening to break through. To be honest, she had been close even before Vastra’s tongue grazed between her thigs, but now it was becoming overwhelming. When Vastra closed her lips over Jenny’s clit and sucked it in her mouth, Jenny came. She felt her body quake before she closed her eyes to the flood of pure pleasure that crashed over her in a surge, and she could not stop the cry that escaped from her throat as Vastra carried her through her orgasm, holding her clit in her mouth and sucking gently while Jenny quivered in bliss. 

When the bliss begun to subside, leaving Jenny in a sea of white light that hazed over her eyes and made her entire body tingle, she expected Vastra’s mouth to release her, so she let go of Vastra’s crests to give her space to move away. But Vastra did nothing of the sort. Instead, she gave Jenny no time to recover before she reached her arms around Jenny’s thigs, grabbed her hips and pulled her even more firmly against her mouth, pressing her tongue against Jenny’s opening. Jenny gasped, her eyes shooting open when she felt the pressure, and a low moan soared from her throat as Vastra pushed her long tongue inside, slowly, but all the way in. Jenny’s hands flew back to Vastra’s crests, holding onto them as if to steady herself, as Vastra begun to stroke her tongue against Jenny’s inner walls in deep thrusts, slowly at first, but soon with more determination. She curled her tongue slightly upwards as she thrusted, focusing pressure on the point just below Jenny’s public bone while pressing her soft scaled palm on Jenny’s lower abdomen just above her mound, increasing the sweet pressure even further. 

The feeling was extraordinary. It was not like being filled with fingers and while Jenny had no experience of sex with men, she was quite sure that it was not like that either. Vastra’s tongue filled her, yes, and the thrusts were deep. But it was the nimbleness with which the tongue moved inside her, bending and pressing at just the right places while becoming firm when it reached deeper, that made Jenny’s mind blurry with pleasure. Jenny felt her hips rock against Vastra’s face on their own accord and her breathing turned into one low moan after another as she begun to rise again despite still being able to feel the aftereffects of her first orgasm. Without any disruption to the deep thrusts inside Jenny, Vastra extended several more inches of tongue out of her mouth, moving a different part of the tongue to press against Jenny’s clit. Jenny’s moans turned into cries at the combined feeling of having her clit and her walls stroked by the same tongue, and this time, when her orgasm begun to break through, she did not even try to hold it back. Instead, she let herself cry out as loud as her body wanted as she felt her eyes close, her muscles grow rigid and her back arch high over the sheets. She came hard, so hard that, for a moment, she worried she might faint at the sheer force of the waves of ecstasy that crashed over her, flushing away everything else from her mind apart from the feeling of Vastra’s tongue on her and in her. As her body trembled and her walls pulsed around Vastra’s tongue, Jenny faintly registered that a warm stream of something fluid was gushing from within her. 

When she slowly begun to come down from the heights of her climax, Jenny opened her eyes to look at Vastra but was suddenly alarmed when she saw that Vastra’s face as well as her neck were absolutely drenched in a clear watery substance. Putting one and one together, Jenny was momentarily mortified to realise that whatever had gushed from her during the peak of her orgasm was now all over Vastra. When Vastra looked back at her with eyes full of unmistakable arousal, however, Jenny allowed herself to relax a little. With a wide satisfied grin, Vastra propped herself on her elbows and reached her tongue out to lick at her own jaw and neckline, humming softly as she tasted the liquid, all the while she was looking directly into Jenny’s eyes. 

“Oh, my dear Jenny,” Vastra said, her grin still intact. “I do not think I have ever experienced anything quite as titillating as that.”

Jenny blushed, still feeling a little shocked but also oddly turned on by the sight of Vastra. With her head between her legs and covered in Jenny’s essence, Vastra looked disgraceful. “You’re completely soaked,” Jenny observed, some of her shock coming through in her voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know wha’ the hell tha’ was. It’s certainly never happened to me before.” 

Vastra smiled and gave out a soft laugh. “I believe it is called squirting in common vernacular, although I have never witnessed it before either. Despite our sexual compositions being otherwise quite similar, Silurians do not have the biological mechanism required for it to happen, but I have heard that it can occur with human women and, I must say, I am thrilled. So please, Jenny, I beg that you do not apologise, for I find it marvellous.” Vastra paused to reinforce this statement with a kiss on Jenny’s thigh. “However,” she added as she edged herself off the bed and walked swiftly to the large cabinet across the room, “next time, we may want to come prepared with a towel.” She grinned at Jenny as she pulled a hand towel from the cabinet and wiped her face and neck with it before tossing it to the floor and walking back to bed.

As soon as Vastra was laying down again, Jenny pulled her in for a long slow kiss, hoping it would convey at least some of the feelings she was experiencing. “No one’s ever made me feel like that,” Jenny whispered as she tickled the small crests on Vastra’s neck with the tips of her fingers, making Vastra hum softly. “I want to make you feel good too… but I’m not sure I know ‘ow.”

Vastra entangled her fingers in Jenny’s hair, stroking the back of her head as Jenny trailed kisses across her jawline. “My dear, you are doing perfectly well as it is.”

“Maybe,” Jenny said quietly, “but I want to touch you like you touched me...” As if to illustrate what she meant, Jenny traced her fingers down over the soft scales on Vastra abdomen, reaching below the space where a bellybutton would have been if Vastra were human. “You seemed ta know what to do even though you’ve never been with a human before. Are you the same as me?”

The response that Vastra gave stopped Jenny in her tracks, however, as she was momentarily stunned to be proven, yet again, that Vastra was, decidedly, not human. 

“Almost... I just have a cloaca and… two clitorises.”


	9. Chapter nine

“What?” Jenny’s voice came out higher pitched than she had intended. “You have… two… what?” Although it was not a word she had heard very often, for talking about such things was wholly improper, Jenny was reasonably confident that she knew what ‘clitoris’ meant. 

“Yes,” Vastra said, raising one brow as she looked at Jenny. “It is a common trait even among reptiles that walk the earth today, although I am not certain your scientists have yet realised this fact. Indeed, it seems that they barely understand the structure of the human clitoris, let alone reptilian ones.”

Jenny was still amazed but the initial surprise of hearing this new information about Vastra was now replaced with curiosity. 

“I didn’t even know other species ‘ave ‘em, I thought it was a human thing,” Jenny said, blushing both because of the indecency of talking about something like this, and from embarrassment as she realised how little she actually knew about it in the first place. It was not talked about, certainly never among respectable people. Even among the less than respectable crowd of petty criminals that Jenny had spent her teenage years with, such things were only mentioned in passing, with hushed and hurried voices tainted with shame. 

Vastra chuckled and gave Jenny a smile as she stroked her hair, sliding her fingers through the dark locks. “That does not surprise me my dear, do not be embarrassed,” she said, with a kiss on Jenny’s cheek. In a somewhat callous tone, she added, “your primitive ape society is so repressive of women’s sexual pleasure that I am impressed you know anything at all about an organ the sole purpose of which is to induce it.”

Jenny raised her brow at this comment, rather taken aback by the harshness of it. Suddenly, uninvited annoyance flushed over her, and she felt a little angry. She may have been used to Vastra’s insensitive remarks about humans, but why would Vastra feel the need to say such a rude thing even now, even at this moment when they were lying in bed together entangled in each other’s arms. “Oh really,” Jenny said, exasperated, as she pulled her hands away from Vastra, “is tha’ wha’ I am to you, even now as I’m askin’ ta make love to you, just a primitive ape who’s too stupid to know anythin’ at all about pleasure?” 

Vastra was clearly bewildered by the sudden change of vibe between them. “Oh no, not at all Jenny,” she said, sounding a little alarmed and reaching for Jenny’s hand, but Jenny did not let her take it. “That is not what I said, and it is not what I meant.” Her blue eyes tried to find Jenny’s brown ones, but Jenny averted them, looking down at her own hands instead. 

Vastra paused for a few seconds and bit her lip hesitantly as if she was trying to find the right words, before she brought her hand to lie on the sheets as close to Jenny’s fingers as she could without actually touching them. “I am sorry Jenny,” she said slowly, “I… sometimes, when I get angry with ap… with human society, I forget that my anger is not towards all humans. It is certainly not towards you. I should not speak to you like that.” 

Jenny was still upset, but she lifted her eyes, meeting Vastra’s. Her voice calmer now, she asked, “why are you so angry ma’am? I mean, I know humans killed your sisters, and you have every right ta be angry about that, but I think that makes you sad nowdays more than it makes you angry… So wha’ is it that makes you so angry?” 

Vastra sighed and, carefully, inched her hand forwards on the sheets until the tips of her fingers brushed against the tips of Jenny’s. Jenny did not pull away this time, which Vastra seemed to take as a positive sign. She slid her fingers between Jenny’s to entwine their hands, and Jenny parted her fingers, allowing Vastra to glide her own between them. 

“What makes me angry is the deplorable state of affairs that characterises this time and place,” Vastra said, quietly, but with an undertone of indignation in her voice. “I am angry that the lives of men who are born with light coloured skin into wealth that has been blundered from other places are valued higher than the lives of others. I am angry that the labouring classes, the people of the colonies, women of all classes and skin colours are not true citizens of this so-called great empire, even though the empire has been built on their blood, sweat and tears.” 

Vastra sighed, and Jenny felt her annoyance dissipating. She always found it difficult to stay upset with Vastra for more than a few minutes, irrespective of how insensitive she had been, but that was especially the case now as she recognised the truth in Vastra’s words. Briefly, she considered how alien human society must truly be for the Silurian. Based on what Vastra had told her about her own people, the human society in which she was forced to now live was in a deplorable state indeed. 

“I am most angry, however, at those pale skinned men who benefit from this state of affairs,” Vastra continued, “there are men in your society who breed and foster inequality because they benefit from it, they foster ignorance among everyone else because the ignorance of others benefits them. Ignorance feeds inequality, Jenny,” Vastra said with a serious tone, her emerald scales glistening in the light. “Those who hold most power in this society breed and foster ignorance, because the more a person knows, the easier it is for her to see that the world could be otherwise. The less she knows, the easier it is to subdue her into compliance with an unequal society that designates her inferior. Knowledge is what sparks resistance, which is why such sparks are quickly smothered by those who hold most power, else the spark could turn into a fire and burn down the shackles that keep subdued all who are not pale wealthy men.” 

Jenny considered Vastra’s words for a long while, absentmindedly gazing at their entwined fingers and admiring the contrasting colours between her own skin and Vastra’s. “I don’t want to be shackled,” Jenny said finally. “I don’t want to be ignorant.”

Vastra smiled as she looked at Jenny. “Then you shall not be.”

“But how could I not be? I never went to any school,” Jenny admitted, feeling her cheeks redden in embarrassment, “ma’am, I barely even know my letters.” 

“I shall teach you,” Vastra said resolutely, and there was a spark in her eyes as she saw Jenny’s face brighten into a smile. “Starting from tomorrow, I shall teach you letters, numbers, and science. And I shall teach you the art of combat, so you may learn how to manoeuvre your body should you fall victim to an attack again.” 

Jenny was excited at the prospect of having the extraordinarily learned Silurian as her teacher, she really was. But right now, Jenny had something else in mind that she wanted to learn about, and she was definitely not willing to let that wait until tomorrow. 

“Thank you, ma’am, truly,” Jenny said genuinely, leaning in closer and bringing her lips to graze over Vastra’s cheek as she whispered, “but tonight, I still want to learn more about your body.” Smiling, she kissed Vastra’s lips softly and lifted her hand to Vastra’s neck, letting her fingers slowly brush over the smaller crests. She appreciated the little shiver that ran through Vastra’s body whenever she touched her there. “I want ta learn how to make you feel good like you did for me… will you teach me how to do that first, ma’am?” 

Vastra exhaled shakily and leaned her head back against the pillows as Jenny softly traced her fingers over her abdomen. “That is easy my dear,” Vastra said with an unsteady voice as she placed her own fingers on top of Jenny’s, and gently guided Jenny’s hand down across her lower stomach and then, slowly, over her mound. 

When Jenny’s fingers made contact with the folds between Vastra’s legs, the first thing she noticed was that Vastra was really wet. Jenny’s fingers were sliding across without any resistance. The second thing she noticed was that what she felt beneath her fingers was not all that unfamiliar, actually. She felt two fuller folds at first, albeit lower down than they would have been on a human, that opened for her as her fingers pressed against them. Then, enclosed underneath, there were two smaller folds that felt delicate like the petals of a flower but were thinner and much less prominent than the inner lips of human women. 

Vastra breath hitched and she whimpered as Jenny’s fingers glided over her, but she allowed Jenny to just feel her, at first, simply resting her hand on top of Jenny’s without any interference. Jenny let her fingers pry lower, searching and finding Vastra’s opening. Curious, she pressed against it, and Vastra moaned as her fingers drifted inside slightly, only an inch or two, but enough for Jenny to feel the exquisite texture of Vastra’s inner walls. She made a mental note to explore them more closely later, but for now, she wanted to trace her fingers higher up. As she reached the point from which Vastra’s two inner folds separated, she realised that at the top of both folds, there was a dense nub of tissue, like soft twin pearls that peaked out from beneath satiny hoods. When Jenny brushed her fingers over each in turn, Vastra’s moaned louder and Jenny felt her hips tense. Enthralled by this reaction, she brushed over them again, but now, as she did so, Vastra pressed her own fingers more firmly on top of Jenny’s, pusing her middle finger and ring finger apart and pressing them down on her clits so that each finger now had a clit all for itself. 

Vastra’s breathing turned increasingly shallow as she guided Jenny’s fingers to concurrently glide over her clits, from the edge of their hoods, around the peak, and then back again. She kept her own fingers on top of Jenny’s for a while, to show Jenny the rhythm that she wanted, but once Jenny’s fingers begun to follow the rhythm on their own accord, Vastra pulled her hand away and buried it in Jenny’s hair instead. Jenny moved her fingers softly first but soon increased the pressure, pushing down more firmly as Vastra’s shallow breaths turned into moans, and she begun to rock her hips against Jenny’s hand in pace with the movement of Jenny’s fingers. Growing more confident in what she was doing between Vastra’s legs, Jenny focused her attention to her other hand. Shifting her weight so that she was lying on her side, Jenny moved her other hand up to caress the sensitive scales on top of Vastra’s head crests while her fingers continued to glide over her clits. Jenny was rewarded with a high pitched whimper, and Vastra tightened her grip in Jenny’s hair, pulling her into a fierce kiss sweetened by the soft vibrations from her moans.

Vastra was rocking her hips harder now, her movements growing unsteady and punctuated by trembles that made it more difficult for Jenny to maintain her fingers in the right place, but she was determined, and focused all her efforts on keeping up with Vastra’s powerful body as it writhed beneath her touch. “My Jenny…” Vastra whispered breathlessly against Jenny’s lips, and Jenny leaned back a little, overcome by a sudden urge to look into Vastra’s eyes as she was nearing climax. A small moan escaped from Jenny as well when she saw how the cerulean blue was overtaken by Vastra’s widened pupils, making her eyes look almost black, like deep wells. Jenny found herself wanting to get lost in them, but as Vastra’s body begun to tense against her, her eyes were drifting closed. “Look at me,” Jenny whispered, pleading, “please, ma’am, look at me.” Vastra opened her eyes, staring deep into Jenny’s own with an expression so awash with pleasure that it looked almost anguished. Even as she came, Vastra’s eyes did not stray from Jenny’s. She cried out and her body quacked, but she kept her gaze resolutely fixed, drawing Jenny, too, into the black sea of pleasure that washed over her eyes. Jenny held onto her through her orgasm, keeping her hand firmly on Vastra’s mound despite the strength with which her powerful thighs jolted her hips. When Vastra begun to come down from her high, the tension releasing from her muscles, Jenny stroked her crests softly, soothing. 

“You know Jenny,” Vastra said, as she begun to catch her breath again, “you probably should not call me ‘ma’am’ while we share a bed like this, it is quite improper.” 

Jenny tried in vain to hold back the involuntary giggles that streamed from her throat at this remark, and Vastra joined her in the laughter. 

“Very improper, but I think you rather like it… don’t you, ma’am?” Jenny asked with feigned innocence, lifting one eyebrow coyly, and it was Vastra who seemed to struggle to hold back a giggle now. “I might…” she admitted, “but I would also quite like to hear you say my name.” 

“Vastra,” Jenny whispered with a smile, enjoying how the word sounded in her own voice, before she captured Vastra’s lips with a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not continue this. I've left it open like this in any case, to leave room if I do feel like writing more.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to read really good Vastra and Jenny stories, my favourite stories and authors – all of which I wholeheartedly recommend, all of which are much better than this one, and all of which have directly influenced this one – are as follows:
> 
> My most favourite is Beauties and Beasts: A Love Story from Paternoster Row by Bluemoonwings. I’ve read it three times. All of Bluemoonwings’ Vastra and Jenny stories are really good though, especially should mention Feel in addition to Beauties and Beasts.   
> All of VictorianLesbian’s Vastra and Jenny stories, although for some reason, My Fair Liege is my favourite. Not sure why but I love it.   
> You and Me by Schimelos   
> Green Tea by Jenstraflintlocked.   
> The Many Adventures of Jenny and Vastra by JMDeLoach  
> We Write Our Own Paths by RachelCoatButtons   
> A Series of Short Stories and A Continued Series of Short Stories On Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint by FriendsCallMeTonks   
> Five Firsts for Jenny and Vastra by gnimmish  
> Paternoster Unconnected Content by IntergalacticCrime is really funny, I recommend for comic relief.   
> Turn_of_the_sonic_screw also writes good stuff.  
> Then, even though I’m slightly uneasy with this story – it’s ABO stuff, which is usually not what I go for – I also can’t stop myself from reading and re-reading it. It’s like I love it and hate it all at once, so I have to recommend it: When her human calls… by Rmepashn. 
> 
> I’ve borrowed somewhat from the above. E.g. I borrowed the idea that Vastra’s crests are sensitive which many people (including but not limited to some of the above) develop, and even though it makes no evolutionary sense for them to be so, the idea is hot, so I ran with it.


End file.
